by Bill Kopp
For the sessions, Pink Floyd brought along a recent acquisition, a VCS 3 synthesizer built by London-based Electronic Music Studio and bought used from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Primitive by twenty-first-century standards, the VCS 3 was but a year old in 1970, and represented cutting-edge synthesizer technology. The device is controlled not by a traditional organ-style keyboard, but by a cluster of knobs and fader tabs. The wide palette of otherworldly sounds within the VCS 3 would be a prominent feature of The Dark Side of the Moon and used, in more sparing fashion, during the sessions for Obscured by Clouds.
The film itself—described as a chronicle of the lead characters’ journey of self-discovery—finds Westerners interacting with the Mapuga tribe of native peoples. Beyond their titles and some notable sound effects, the songs composed and recorded for Schroeder’s second directorial turn (after 1969’s More) bear little if any lyrical connection to the onscreen action or dialogue. But as mood pieces, Pink Floyd’s ten songs for La Vallée are effective at helping to create specific moods.
Obscured by Clouds is characterized by a wealth of instrumental numbers. The album opens with the title track (credited to Waters and Gilmour), introduced by a low, extended bass-note hum courtesy of the band’s new VCS 3. Nick Mason joins in with a simple drum pattern, eventually layering percussive complexity atop it. More VCS 3 lines are added, and after nearly a minute, David Gilmour enters on slide guitar, with Waters joining on bass. As Gilmour plays a straightforward solo, his band mates hold down the rhythmic backing, with Wright and Waters never diverging from the single note (A) that they’re playing. Pink Floyd would perform the tune a number of times live onstage in 1972–1973.
As “Obscured by Clouds” fades toward silence, a crisp Nick Mason snare drum introduction kicks off “When You’re In.” Beginning with the same note, and in the same key, as the track that precedes it, “When You’re In” eventually unfolds into a tune with more standard chord changes. An insistent, vaguely martial melody, the second instrumental on Obscured by Clouds features a traditional verse-and-chorus structure, with Rick Wright’s organ and David Gilmour’s lead guitar often playing the signature melody in unison. Wright also adds occasional, subtle keyboard fills as flourishes. The group-credited “When You’re In” takes a longer than customary amount of time to fade out. Pink Floyd included the song in its live performances around the time of the album’s release.
The 3/4 time signature is often called “waltz time.” The traditional dance designed to accompany music in that time signature is also called the waltz. But while “Burning Bridges” (credited to Richard Wright and Roger Waters) is nominally in 3/4, the glacially paced tune is perhaps better thought of as being in 6/8, as the pattern and melody do not conform to the waltz “feel.” Richard Wright’s Hammond organ melody forms the basis of the gentle tune. Gilmour and Wright take turns singing lead and backing each other with vocal harmonies. Gilmour’s quiet, shimmering guitar melody supports Wright’s organ part, and the guitarist adds two distinctly different solos mid-song, plus a third as the tune fades out. “Burning Bridges” would never be performed live by Pink Floyd or any of its individual members.
Most every Pink Floyd soundtrack project features at least one hard rock song. More had “The Nile Song,” and Zabriskie Point would have had several had Antonioni used the material the band provided. “The Gold It’s in The . . .” is Obscured by Clouds’ entry in that category. Like “The Nile Song,” it feels awkwardly out of place within the band’s catalog—the tune is as unfinished as its title—but considered on its own merits, it’s a reasonably successful album track. With a boogie-rock feel, it’s a slice of somewhat clichéd lyrics (“You go your way; I’ll go mine”) and a rote melody. Lacking a traditional chorus, each verse ends in a way that leaves the listener expecting a few more measures of music and words; instead, a Nick Mason drum fill—the term fill is especially appropriate here—appears to bridge the tune into the next verse. David Gilmour does his enthusiastic best with the under-written lyrics (the final word of the line “All I have to do is just close my eyes” is extended uncomfortably over four beats). “The Gold It’s in The . . .” redeems itself somewhat with a blistering electric guitar solo from Gilmour. The solo takes up the better part of two out of the song’s three minutes. Not surprisingly, “The Gold It’s in The . . .” would never be performed onstage by Pink Floyd.
The group’s practice of using odd titles for tunes on Obscured by Clouds continues with a Waters–Gilmour song, “Wot’s . . . Uh the Deal?” With a pastoral, country-ish feel that places David Gilmour’s acoustic guitar and Richard Wright’s acoustic piano at the center of the mix, it’s one of Pink Floyd’s prettiest melodies. Waters’s melancholy lyrics concern having a chill in one’s soul, fear of aging, and the frustrations of keeping up with the rat race; all of these themes would seem to have been in the forefront of the bassist’s thoughts, as all would figure prominently in the lyrics of the temporarily suspended The Dark Side of the Moon project. Some fetching “round” singing (courtesy of Gilmour’s overdubbed voice) adds a pop quality not often found in the band’s work. A subtle yet rousing chorus leads into a pair of lovely solo breaks from Rick Wright and David Gilmour, respectively. The tune’s dour lyrics are more than offset by the lilting melody and sublime instrumental work. Like most of the songs from Obscured by Clouds, “Wot’s . . . Uh the Deal?” would never become part of a Pink Floyd live set, but in 2006, David Gilmour performed the song on multiple dates of his On an Island tour. Those performances included Richard Wright on piano, and represent some of his final concerts before his death in 2008.
Though it’s credited to David Gilmour and Richard Wright, the instrumental “Mudmen” is very close in both melody and arrangement to the Wright–Waters composition “Burning Bridges.” The first minute and a half of the song features Wright’s organ as its central instrument, with some understated vibraphone accompaniment deep in the mix. David Gilmour adds a soaring guitar solo, after which the melody breaks down, with Mason’s drums exiting. A VCS 3 sound bed provides backing for a second Gilmour solo, this time on slide guitar. Mason and bassist Waters eventually rejoin, and the tune’s final minute features all four musicians playing with gusto (albeit at an exceedingly measured pace). There are no known live Pink Floyd performances of “Mudmen.”
The second side of the Obscured by Clouds LP opens with perhaps the album’s strongest tune, “Childhood’s End.” Solely composed by David Gilmour, “Childhood’s End” would be only the fourth tune written by the guitarist on his own while in Pink Floyd. (It would also be his last solo composition for the band until reforming Pink Floyd without Roger Waters in the mid-1980s.) The song opens with an extended fade-in featuring Rick Wright’s organ and VCS 3. Via overdubbing, the synthesizer produces multiple sounds; one of these is a thumping, percussive sound that provides a beat for the song prior to Nick Mason’s drum part. The distinctive VCS 3 percussion for “Childhood’s End” would soon appear again on a Pink Floyd record, this time as a prominent feature of “Time” from The Dark Side of the Moon.
As that extended introduction begins to fade out, the full-band arrangement of “Childhood’s End” is faded in, first featuring Gilmour’s acoustic guitar, followed by electric guitar, bass, drums, and a vibrato-laden Hammond organ from Rick Wright. Gilmour’s lyrics had been inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke science fiction novel of the same name. A minor-key blues with some dramatic flourishes, “Childhood’s End” would be featured prominently in Pink Floyd concerts beginning in 1972 and continuing into the next year. Following a favored band practice, those live performances often extended the song to twice the length of its studio version. None of these performances have been released officially, but many audience recordings circulate among collectors.
Viewed within the context of Pink Floyd’s body of work, Roger Waters’s “Free Four” is atypical. Displaying the sardonic gallows humor he had exhibited in songs as early as “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk” fro
m 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the bassist weds a jaunty, singalong melody to dark lyrics. In the tune—which has six verses but no chorus—Waters contrasts life as “a short, warm moment” and death as a “long, cold rest,” and refers to an angel of death, burial, and a funeral drum. The song, which features peppy hand claps throughout, briefly comments on the perils of the music industry—a theme to which Roger Waters would return in some detail on Pink Floyd’s 1975 LP, Wish You Were Here—and begins and ends with lyrics that suggest that everyone will “talk to yourself as you die.” An uptempo David Gilmour guitar solo and a rumbling bass note—courtesy the VCS 3—are the distinctive sonic elements of “Free Four.” Pink Floyd never played the song live, but Capitol Records did release the song in the United States as a single in 1972. It did not chart.
Richard Wright’s melancholy “Stay” is the final vocal track on Obscured by Clouds. After Wright enters on grand piano, David Gilmour joins in on slide guitar played through a wah-wah pedal. The rhythm section of Roger Waters and Nick Mason plays a straight, understated part in the song. Rick Wright harmonizes with himself on the song’s vocals. The tone and style of “Stay” would be a preview of the songs Wright would write and record six years later on his solo debut album, Wet Dream. David Gilmour’s guitar solo employs the wah-wah pedal effect in even more emphatic fashion, and continues in understated style as the song concludes.
Obscured by Clouds closes with an instrumental track, “Absolutely Curtains.” The song opens with a quiet flourish on Nick Mason’s cymbals, joined by a long-held organ chord and a brief piano figure. At the one-minute mark, Rick Wright’s Farfisa organ makes an appearance, as do some quiet tubular bells and electric piano. Tack piano and celeste are subtly woven into the mix of what is essentially a one-chord, impressionistic piece. Wright’s Hammond organ fades in and then drones on. Pink Floyd fades out, leaving behind the sound of a “field recording” of a chant featuring the Mapuga tribe (from the film). That field recording continues for nearly two minutes, and then Obscured by Clouds is over.
Pink Floyd’s seventh studio album was released June 2, 1972. Between the end of the album’s recording sessions and its release date, Pink Floyd had embarked upon a US tour, and then crossed the Atlantic to play a pair of festivals (2nd British Rock Meeting in West Germany, and Amsterdam Rock Circus in the Netherlands). While the regular concert dates had featured the still-developing The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, for the shorter festival set, Pink Floyd reverted back to earlier set lists that included tunes from older albums, with “A Saucerful of Secrets” as an encore.
Critical response to Obscured by Clouds was measured. Atlanta underground publication Great Speckled Bird’s Steve Wise wrote, “The old Floyd that I knew and loved just isn’t here . . . The album’s pleasantness will simply not compensate for its lack of dynamism.” With the benefit of hindsight, many latter-day reviewers would praise the album as an underrated gem in Pink Floyd’s catalog. The 2016 box set, The Early Years, includes a new remixed version of the album in its entirety as part of the massive package.
Because of disagreements with director Barbet Schroeder’s production company, Pink Floyd and EMI chose not to market Obscured by Clouds as a soundtrack film to La Vallée. But hoping still to capitalize on the band’s connection to the film, when it was released to theaters in August 1972, the film was titled La Vallée/Obscured by Clouds. Meanwhile, Pink Floyd continued work on The Dark Side of the Moon, and in between sessions continued efforts on a planned ballet performance for which the band had committed to write new music.
Chapter 23
Pompeii and Ballet
After the band’s September 30, 1971, live concert recorded for BBC Radio’s Sounds of the Seventies, Pink Floyd headed for Pompeii, Italy. The group had agreed to take part in the making of a concert film. But Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii would be no ordinary rock show movie. Director Adrian Maben had decided to avoid the typical approach of filming a band at a show, with cuts between onstage action and an adoring live audience. For his film, Maben chose an unusual venue: the Amphitheatre of Pompeii, the oldest surviving structure of its kind (and the earliest known to have been constructed of stone). Constructed around 70 BCE, the Amphitheatre of Pompeii would serve as a model for modern-day stadiums.
Odder still was the choice—agreed upon between the director and Pink Floyd—to stage a concert with no audience. So for four days in early October, Pink Floyd set up all of its audio gear (but not its lighting rigs or other visuals) and was filmed performing a selection of new and older material. The band had performed an entire “concert without audience” for film in 1970, but that session—done for San Francisco’s public television station KQED—took place in a studio (the KQED session finally received home video release as part of 2016’s The Early Years box set).
For the film, Pink Floyd performed six songs: “Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” “A Saucerful of Secrets,” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” (all originally recorded in 1968), “One of These Days” and “Echoes” (both originally heard on 1971’s Meddle), and one new song, “Mademoiselle Nobs.”
By this point in the band’s career, all of the songs in the Pompeii set (save “Mademoiselle Nobs”) were concert staples, and the arrangements were quite well established. As such, the live performances in the film differ little from standard concert versions of the time. Though Richard Wright had not yet begun to bring a grand piano on tour, for Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii the keyboardist would have access to one, and his acoustic piano is a prominent part of the band’s reading of “A Saucerful of Secrets” in particular.
A slight, offhand track, the country blues “Mademoiselle Nobs” is a variation on Meddle’s “Seamus,” featuring a different dog providing vocalization, and without human vocals. Notably, when a 5.1 surround sound version of Live at Pompeii finally received sanctioned released in 2016 (as part of The Early Years box set), “Mademoiselle Nobs” was not included.
Additional recording and filming for Pink Floyd at Pompeii would take place in mid-December in Paris’s Studio Europasinor. There, the band did some overdubbing and fixing of vocal tracks, as well as transflex filming (a technique that allows post-production superimposition of other images, similar to modern-day “green screen” video techniques used for special effects and weather reports). The film received limited release in 1972, with wider distribution on its 1974 re-release. Capitalizing on Pink Floyd’s massive success with 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, that second release added footage of the band working on recordings at Abbey Road Studios.
Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii received positive reviews. Writing about the film in 1974, Great Speckled Bird’s Ward Silver noted that “‘Careful With That Axe, Eugene,’ perhaps the most viscerally terrifying music they have ever done on record, is light years more powerful when director Adrian Maben cuts from Roger Waters’ mind-wrenching scream to Vesuvius’ overflowing lava.” The movie became a staple of weekend midnight movies across the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and sold well on its VHS release. Director Maben put together a “Director’s Cut” of Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii in 2003, adding modern-day computer graphics, stock footage, and outtakes from the original filming sessions. For his part, David Gilmour didn’t think much of that third revised version; in a Record Collector interview, he sarcastically referred to it as “a new, groovier version,” explaining that Maben had made “footage of ludicrous architectural designs of what Pompeii might have looked like.” Making it clear that the 2003 edit was not approved by him, he offered his opinion: “Just stick with the original!”
Nick Mason wrote about the original film in his Pink Floyd history, Inside Out, noting that “the elements that seem to make it work—none of which we had thought much about during the filming in October 1971—were the decision to perform live instead of miming and the rather gritty environment created by the heat and the wind.” He summed up Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii succinctly as “a surp
risingly good attempt to film our live set.”
The quietest member of the band, Rick Wright wouldn’t provide many on-the-record comments about Pompeii. But in a 1989 conversation with band biographer Nicholas Schaffner, he seemed to hold a positive view of the film. “The only problem,” he said, “was the director!”
In 2014, Rolling Stone placed the film at #12 on its list of greatest rock documentaries, noting its place in history as “the ultimate document of psych-rock’s transition” into progressive rock. And with fond memories of the original 1972 experience, David Gilmour returned to the Amphitheatre of Pompeii in 2016 to film a concert of his own—this time with an audience in attendance—for a one-night-only worldwide theatrical screening in September 2017.
In some ways, Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii seems destined to take its place as the film that will never die. In early 2017, Adrian Maben announced plans for yet another revised version of the film—bringing the total to four—for release in November 2017. In an Italian-language interview with news website repubblica.it, he teased interviewer Michele Chisena about the discovery of long-lost outtake footage, saying, “Wait and see for the answer.” Pressed on the motivation for releasing yet another cut of the 1972 film, he explained, “I’m a bit like a nineteenth century French painter, Pierre Bonnard, who used to retouch and paint his paintings in later years when they were still in the Louvre. And the museum officials were furious!”