by Bill Kopp
Jerry Shirley played live with Syd Barrett once during the period surrounding the making of The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. “Having actually played a live gig with him, I can attest to his ability to not stick to a structure. It worked in songs some of the time, and it didn’t work live on that one disastrous gig that Dave and I did with him.” He’s referring to a set—Barrett’s first-ever post–Pink Floyd solo concert performance—at the Music and Fashion Festival at London’s Kensington Olympia on June 6, 1970, in between Barrett sessions.
“It was me on drums, Dave on bass, and Syd,” Shirley says, noting that a bootleg audio document of the abortive set circulates among collectors and online. “To be fair to everybody, including Syd, we didn’t exactly rehearse for weeks. It was a real ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ thing; I had probably heard about the fact that we were doing it that afternoon!”
The set gets off to a reasonably solid start, though problems with the PA system would make Barrett’s vocal hard to hear. “In the middle of the third or fourth song, Syd just took his guitar off and walked off,” Shirley recalls. “Dave and I just stood there.” Shirley gamely attempts to cover Barrett’s exit with a drum flourish, but clearly the gig is over.
The Madcap Laughs drummer Willie Wilson had returned for some of the Barrett sessions to add bits of percussion overdubs. Those sessions were by no means the last time Willie Wilson would work with David Gilmour; the Pink Floyd guitarist produced releases by Wilson’s later band Sutherland Brothers & Quiver. Wilson played drums on Gilmour’s self-titled 1978 solo LP debut, and was an onstage Nick Mason doppelganger as part of the “surrogate band” for live dates in support of 1979’s double album The Wall. Wilson would also play on Gilmour solo releases well into the twenty-first century.
Jerry Shirley had helped out on the pair of Barrett solo albums in spare moments between his commitments with massively successful supergroup Humble Pie; he would remain with that band until its very end, drumming on all eleven studio albums, plus more than a half dozen live sets (most notably the 1971 hit Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore). He also worked on other artists’ album sessions, took part in the group Natural Gas with former Badfinger guitarist Joey Molland, and worked as a radio deejay. Shirley published his lively memoir, Best Seat in the House, in 2011.
The end product released as Barrett can in many ways be heard as the proper follow-up to the songs and recordings Syd Barrett had made with Pink Floyd three years earlier for The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Had he been working with a less sympathetic team than his ex-band mates and close friends, it is quite likely that Syd Barrett would never have been in a position to release a record as relatively finished and conventional as Barrett. In any event, save for Opel—a 1988 compilation of outtakes from 1968 and 1970—Barrett would be Syd’s final recorded work. But the artist himself seemed more than open to the possibility of further musical endeavors. In 1971, he told Beat Instrumental’s Steve Turner that he was thinking about assembling a new group and recording new material. “It’d be a groove, wouldn’t it?” he said. “I’m still in love with being a pop star, really.”
And despite his reputation for being difficult at best, there would be no shortage of high-profile names who would, in the years to come, express keen interest in bringing Syd Barrett back into the studio to create new recordings. Writing for New Musical Express in 1974, Nick Kent cited a list of interested parties that included Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, former Soft Machine guitarist Kevin Ayers, and Roxy Music’s Brian Eno. He also mentioned David Bowie, who had just released an all-covers album, Pin-Ups, featuring the Syd Barrett–era Pink Floyd song “See Emily Play.” None of that interest came to fruition, however, and Bowie told Kent, “I think Dave [Gilmour] is the only one who could pull it off. There seems to be a relationship there.”
In that Beat Instrumental interview, Barrett was cogent and articulate. Addressing the stark contrast between his solo work and the kind of sounds emanating from his former group—Atom Heart Mother had been released a few months earlier—Barrett explained, “I think that people miss the fact that [The Madcap Laughs is] obviously a gentler thing because it’s clever and it’s into that more than content. The message,” he suggested with a flash of self-awareness, “might be a bit lost because people find it hard to grasp.”
In a statement issued after Barrett’s death in July 2006, David Gilmour sought to sum up that which made Pink Floyd’s founding guitarist a special artist. “Do find time today to play some of Syd’s songs and to remember him as the madcap genius who made us all smile with his wonderfully eccentric songs about bikes, gnomes, and scarecrows. His career was painfully short, yet he touched more people than he could ever know.”
With their production work on Barrett completed in July (the album would be released in November 1970), David Gilmour and Rick Wright turned their attention fully to completion of Pink Floyd’s album-in-progress, Atom Heart Mother.
Part V
Remergence (1970)
Chapter 18
Epic
Whether it was true—as Pink Floyd biographer Nicholas Schaffner would claim in hindsight—that “the turn of the decade found Pink Floyd floundering for direction,” or whether it was merely a case of the band’s having been so focused for an extended period on work for others (Zabriskie Point, The Body, The Madcap Laughs, and Barrett all required time and energy that could have instead been applied to creating new Pink Floyd music), as 1970 began, the group found itself without a bounty of new ideas for its fifth album.
In September 1969, Richard Wright told Top Pops & Music Now of the band’s plans: “We’re still recording in December; the idea for the album will probably come out of our new concert tours.” But things didn’t work out that way: Pink Floyd’s only studio sessions in December 1969 included work on material planned—but ultimately not used—for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point film. And from there, the four members of Pink Floyd turned their attention to various extracurricular musical projects.
Amid that flurry of activity, Pink Floyd kept up a steady schedule of live performances through 1970. The band’s set lists in January were built mostly around older material, but did include two newer works, “Embryo” and an extended work initially titled “The Amazing Pudding.” The latter had developed out of a particularly inventive chord sequence written by David Gilmour; in its earliest form, he informally called that sequence “Theme for an Imaginary Western.” Apparently, Gilmour was unaware that former Cream bassist Jack Bruce had already written a tune with that very title, released on his 1969 LP, Songs for a Tailor (American hard rock group Mountain played “Theme” onstage at Woodstock, and released its cover version in 1970).
Once the song made its way to the stage—debuting at a Hull University concert in mid-January—it was introduced as “The Amazing Pudding.” Gilmour’s sophisticated sequence of chords became the central theme of the long piece, joined by more abstract and improvisational sections. Building upon the concept of multiple-movement works begun with “A Saucerful of Secrets” and carried forward with “The Man and the Journey,” the wordless “The Amazing Pudding” focused on melody and texture rather than lyrics.
As “The Amazing Pudding” developed onstage, various ideas were created, tested, incorporated, and sometimes discarded. While specific recording dates have not been revealed, an early studio take of this extended piece, one that would become known as “Atom Heart Mother,” is featured in the Pink Floyd box set The Early Years. This undated recording, likely from early to mid-1970, finds the track already running nearly twenty minutes. Nick Mason’s insistent snare introduction—a feature of early live performances—would soon be dropped from the arrangement, but Gilmour’s basic theme was already the centerpiece of the work. A grand and dramatic melody featuring Richard Wright’s organ gives way to a second, dreamier section highlighted by Gilmour’s fluid slide guitar. Each repeating of the phrase features added emphasis, generally in the form of more overdubbed lead guitar from Gilmour. Ev
en though his bass playing centers primarily on the root note of each chord, the unusual, shifting chords result in one of Roger Waters’s most interesting and memorable bass guitar parts.
Four and half minutes in, the song enters its third “movement.” A simple, hypnotic Hammond organ line is joined occasionally by judicious strikes upon Nick Mason’s tubular bells. After a minute of this, Wright adds a bridging chord sequence, joined by Waters and Mason, both playing with restraint and subtlety. As with Gilmour’s earlier sections, this part of the early version of “Atom Heart Mother” is lacking in a top-line melody, yet in its first several minutes, the tune does not sound particularly unfinished. As Wright continues to play this basic progression, Mason liberally adds his trademark fills.
As that section gives way to another, a bluesy, three-chord jam foundation provides the opportunity for David Gilmour to peel off a lengthy, highly melodic electric guitar solo. The guitarist adds interest by occasionally inserting some major chords into what is primarily a minor-chord workout. The section that follows finds Gilmour receding into the sonic background, giving space for Wright to add some jazzy chord fills while Roger Waters provides the melody.
At thirteen-plus minutes, a grandiose bridging section brings the song back to its theme, delivered now—most notably by Nick Mason—with greater gusto and complexity. A drum roll fades out, and then—after a few seconds of silence—back in, giving way once again to the “second” theme, played through several more times with increasing emphasis. The piece ends with Gilmour’s original “first” theme, also played multiple times.
It seems clear from this early version that Mason’s lengthy drum rolls throughout the work were meant to serve as placeholders. But while even in its early form “Atom Heart Mother” had quite a few signature melodies, the band seemed at a loss as to what they might add into the unfinished sections. And as dramatic as this early “Atom Heart Mother” could be—especially onstage—there is no denying its repetitive nature. Something more would be needed.
Feeling that they had hit a creative wall with the piece, the other band members were receptive to a suggestion from Roger Waters that they call upon Ron Geesin for help. The composer’s avant-garde credentials were next to none; perhaps he could give “The Amazing Pudding”—or whatever the band’s latest epic would eventually be called—what was needed to bring it into shape for release.
“When we did Atom Heart Mother, they were at their lowest point of creativity,” says Geesin. Acknowledging how busy the members of Pink Floyd had been with outside projects, he says, “they were pretty exhausted, and they didn’t really know where to go. It just happened that I was on the spot around that time.”
In some ways, Geesin was an odd choice. For one, Pink Floyd had never worked with an outside composer or used session musicians (save Norman Smith’s drumming on A Saucerful of Secrets’ “Remember a Day”). And by 1970, the group had largely taken control of its studio work: on release of Atom Heart Mother in October, Smith would be listed as “executive producer.” More significantly, perhaps, was the fact that Ron Geesin wasn’t even a fan of the band’s work. “I wasn’t interested much in their music,” he says. “I’m still not. It doesn’t do anything for me.” Speaking about progressive rock—a term often applied to Pink Floyd’s music—Geesin sniffs, “it doesn’t matter how progressive it thinks it is; it’s not actually very progressive at all.” Even though Geesin had shared billing with Pink Floyd as far back as 1967, he contrasts his music with the sounds they made. “I would just do my thing, which is a sort of an absurdist eruption,” he says, describing it as “a nice contrast to what was going to come on next.”
Still, owing to his friendship with Roger Waters and the positive experience of collaborating on the soundtrack for The Body, Geesin agreed to help. In early April 1970, the band provided Geesin with work-tapes of the early version of “Atom Heart Mother” and then got on a plane to New York City, where they would begin a North American tour that would run through late May.
From Geesin’s perspective, the material he had been given was rather basic and lacking in melody. He characterizes Pink Floyd’s musical approach this way: “If it wasn’t a defined song, then they would be making what was equivalent of a background wash to which the public supplied its ethereal melody in its own [collective] head.” But for “Atom Heart Mother,” it was—among other things—Geesin’s job to create an actual melody. “With ‘Atom Heart Mother,’ I supplied the melody to their background, literally,” he says.
When it comes to popular music—be it rock, country, or many other styles—the concept of repetition is a feature, not a bug. But for the avant-garde-minded Geesin, the repetitive nature of the Pink Floyd track he was working on was a bridge too far. Upon hearing the main theme reprising for what to him seemed like the umpteenth time, he recalls exclaiming, “Oh God, not again!” So he decided to change it. “The last two choruses—if you want to call the sequence a chorus, which is the same chord sequence as the first theme—I just changed it to a whole completely new melody,” Geesin says. “Which really works: you’ve got the repetition underneath but you’ve got the top doing [something] different.”
With “Atom Heart Mother,” Geesin sought to transform Pink Floyd’s piece—noted on early session documents as “Untitled Epic”—into something a bit more musically weighty and serious. One way in which he pursued that goal was to compose parts for a brass ensemble and choir. While choir-like vocals had cropped up toward the end of “A Saucerful of Secrets,” Syd Barrett had brought in a Salvation Army band for his final Pink Floyd session, and Rick Wright had performed a trombone solo on “Biding My Time,” Geesin’s plans would represent exploration of new territory for the band.
“When we got in the studio, they had no bloody clue what was going to happen with those brass players,” Geesin says. The members of Pink Floyd had not yet heard a note of Geesin’s score, he says, “because I couldn’t play those ten brass parts on the piano to them.” But once the ensemble did record Geesin’s written parts on top of a basic track cut by Waters and Mason, everyone seemed satisfied. “They’d run the tape with my new stuff, and it seemed to sound right,” Geesin says.
The vocal choir that appears toward the middle of “Atom Heart Mother” splits its time between somewhat conventional—if wordless—vocalizing and some truly weird recitations (“Suck! Suck!” in the section subtitled “Funky Dung”) that are unlike anything in the Pink Floyd catalog before or since.
The part of “Atom Heart Mother” known as “Mind Your Throats Please” is closer in spirit to Pink Floyd’s own outré musical excursions, such as “A Saucerful of Secrets,” but Geesin’s contributions are faded in and out of the mix as well on the final version. And in keeping with the band’s penchant for including found sounds into its works, toward the final moments of “Atom Heart Mother,” two snippets of studio chatter (“Here is a loud announcement!” and “Silence in the studio!”) are woven into the sonic mix.
Geesin would experience great frustration during the sessions for “Atom Heart Mother.” Owing to EMI’s prohibition on tape splicing, the basic track laid down earlier by Waters on bass and Mason on drums had to be performed as a single performance rather than a spliced-together collection of shorter tracks. In practice, that meant that the tempo wavered throughout; that, in turn, made it quite difficult for classically trained brass and choral musicians to follow along when overdubbing their parts. “The tempo goes up and down,” Nick Mason told MOJO in 1994. “We just staggered through it.” Furthermore, once the orchestral parts were added, it was realized that the entire score was off from Pink Floyd’s basic track by one beat; there was no way to correct the error.
Despite the great amount of time and attention put into the track eventually known as “Atom Heart Mother Suite,” it represents only one side—literally and figuratively—of the Atom Heart Mother album. For the album’s flip side, Pink Floyd would return to its customary method of working as a self-contained
unit. For the second side of the record, each of the band’s songwriters—Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Richard Wright—would provide an original tune. The final track on the album would be a sound collage that hearkened back to part of 1969’s live “The Man and the Journey.”
Roger Waters’s plaintive, gentle, and mostly acoustic “If” features inward-looking lyrics that deal with the nature of human relationships, question whether its first-person protagonist is indeed a good man, and hint at a lyrical theme Waters would soon explore in greater detail. Asking if he would be forced to endure wires in his brain should he go insane, Waters previews the subject matter of The Dark Side of the Moon’s “Brain Damage.” The folky “If” includes a simple slide guitar solo from David Gilmour; the musical contributions of Richard Wright and Nick Mason are subtle and not central to the song’s arrangement. The band would perform the tune on BBC, but “If” never became part of Pink Floyd’s live repertoire. In his post–Pink Floyd days, however, Roger Waters would often feature “If,” sometimes with extra lyrics and melody.
Keyboardist Richard Wright hadn’t had an original song—that is, music and lyrics—on a Pink Floyd album since 1968’s “Remember a Day.” But with its gentle lead vocal and piano melody, “Summer ’68” displays Wright’s increased confidence as a songwriter. The tune features a poppy chorus that seems flown in from another song, and in place of a guitar solo, Wright chooses a brief melody—played three times during the tune—performed by the Abbey Road Session Pops Orchestra. The oblique tale of Wright’s meeting a groupie on tour, “Summer ’68” would be released (in Japan only) as the B-side of a reissued “Julia Dream,” itself originally a B-side from 1968. Pink Floyd would never perform “Summer ’68” live onstage.