by Bill Kopp
“We’re writing a ballet for Roland Petit which will be in Paris next June,” Roger Waters told Georgia Straight’s Mike Quigley in October 1970. “And the sky’s the limit for that.”
As the wryly self-effacing Nick Mason would write in his Pink Floyd chronicle, Inside Out, the band’s motivation for exploring a combination of rock music and ballet performance was borne of the band’s “quest for upmarket artistry.” In 1970, the band members met with acclaimed French ballet company director and choreographer Roland Petit to discuss the prospect of collaboration.
Petit had long since earned a reputation for cutting-edge productions: rather than yet another production of The Nutcracker Suite or Swan Lake, Petit had begun his choreography career staging Guernica, a work inspired by Pablo Picasso’s antiwar painting of the same name and based loosely on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The adventurous Petit staged many other works, including 1967’s Paradise Lost, based upon John Milton’s epic poem published three hundred years earlier.
The ideas explored over a series of conversations ranged widely; as the concept progressed, it would become less and less ambitious, more conventional. One idea floated was the staging of a ballet production of Marcel Proust’s 1913 novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). Early plans called for ballet icon Rudolf Nureyev to star in the lead, and for the troupe to be backed by Pink Floyd plus an orchestra featuring more than 100 musicians. And Pink Floyd would write all new music for the production. That wildly ambitious idea—based as it was upon a book often described as dense and impenetrable—received a cool reception from Pink Floyd.
Subsequent concepts discussed and discarded included a version of Arabian Nights, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and, courtesy of director Roman Polanski, who was in on some of the informal meetings, making a pornographic film. “It was a complete joke because no one had any idea what they wanted to do,” Roger Waters told ZigZag’s Connor McKnight in 1973.
“It just went on for two years, this idea of doing a ballet,” Nick Mason explained to McKnight in that same interview. The discussions were characterized by “no one coming up with any ideas, us not setting aside any time because there was nothing specific.” Eventually Petit took charge. “In a desperate moment, Roland devised a ballet to some existing music, which I think was a good idea,” Mason explained.
In November 1972, a series of shows was staged in Marseilles, France. Petit served as choreographer and artistic director for Les Ballets de Marseilles, and the production starred ballerina Maïa Plissetskaia, formerly of Moscow’s famed Bolshoi Theatre. The program was in three parts, the third of which was titled Le ballet Pink Floyd. A four-movement work, that ballet had as its soundtrack five songs from the Pink Floyd catalog, played live by the band on a raised stage behind the dancers. Two days of rehearsals were followed by five shows at Marseilles’ Salle Valliers sports complex.
A second season of Le ballet Pink Floyd would be staged in Paris in January 1973; this time, after a two-day rehearsal, the work was presented twice a day over four succeeding weekends, for sixteen performances total. The band played live for the first eight; recordings of Pink Floyd would be used for the remaining performances.
Even though the band was playing songs that had been in its repertoire for some time—“Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” in particular—the demands of choreography meant that there was no room for deviation, much less improvisation. The music and dance had to be closely synchronized, and that meant that performances of the songs (“Eugene,” plus “Echoes” and “One of These Days” [from Meddle] and “Obscured by Clouds” and “When You’re In” from the just-released album) would have to be played exactly the same way each time. As such, musical spontaneity would not be a feature of the concerts. But as surviving film clips (included on DVD and Blu-ray in The Early Years box set) illustrate, the overall effect is still quite breathtaking. The dancers are in fine form and deliver expressive movement that corresponds (after a fashion) to the music being performed live.
The experience of playing to a tightly choreographed program in Le ballet Pink Floyd may have provided a foundation for the group when, seven years later, the band would embark upon a three-city tour (London, New York, and Los Angeles) to perform The Wall, another work that required live performance that mandated adherence to painstakingly precise timings.
Though when asked about the project in 1998, David Gilmour told MOJO that the whole thing was little more than “a bit of old ballet danced to a bit of old music,” its legacy would quietly endure. Forty-plus years after Le ballet Pink Floyd staged its final performance, the Corps de Ballet of the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, Italy, would stage an updated version of Petit’s work, using additional (pre-recorded) music from Pink Floyd’s catalog. The program described Petit’s ballet as a “masterpiece” and went on to note that its “great impact is due to the psychedelic effects of the music, the clever lighting and the choreographed movements which unite cultured dance with rock.”
Part VII
On the Run (1972–1973)
Chapter 24
Quiet Desperation
Amid other high-profile activities—namely the Roland Petit ballet project, filming of Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, and a concert schedule that included no fewer than ninety dates in 1972—the four members of Pink Floyd channeled their creative energies into the creation of their newest work. The group’s live performances would be essential to development of that project. In the past, the band had routinely developed new material onstage before committing it to tape (the epic compositions “Echoes” and “Atom Heart Mother Suite” being the readiest examples), but in 1972 Pink Floyd would refine and polish an entire album’s worth of music, start to finish, onstage.
Originally (and provisionally) titled “Eclipse,” the album-length work was first presented in January. Thanks to an anonymous and intrepid audience member who secreted a portable recorder into the Brighton Dome concert venue, an audio document of the first-ever performance of “Eclipse” has been preserved for history. The illicit recording provides an illustrative example of the work in its most inchoate stage: here it is remarkably close in many ways to the final form that would be recorded as The Dark Side of the Moon, but a number of key elements are yet to be refined.
As captured on that recording, “Eclipse” opens with a tape playback simulation of a beating heart. After more than a minute, some ominous, droning notes—likely courtesy the VCS 3 the band had recently purchased—are added to the mix. Baffled laughter can be heard among the audience; few if any would have any idea what lay in store. The synthesizer note is bent upward, and the audience begins to clap; likely this is the point at which the band appears onstage (or at least becomes visible to the audience).
As the “heartbeat” continues, Pink Floyd launches into a new song, “Breathe.” Built around a simple yet irresistible two-chord motif, “Breathe” had grown out of informal jam sessions earlier in the month. Interviewed in the DVD Classic Albums: The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon, Roger Waters wryly recalled the tune’s genesis: “Let’s play E and A minor for an hour or two. All right, that’ll take up five minutes.”
After a minute and a half meditation on that two-chord vamp, David Gilmour enters with plaintive vocals. The lyrics for the song—like all of the words created for The Dark Side of the Moon, written by Waters—are still in development here. But the songwriter’s general idea—setting a scene based upon an individual—is already fully in place. Even in its early form, Waters’s lyrics explore the potential and, more important, the challenges and limitations of a human life. The subtle differences between the words in this January 20 concert and the lyrics on the finished album are striking: here Gilmour sings the final line of “Breathe” as “you stumble toward an early grave.” On the LP, it’s “race toward . . .”
On The Dark Side of the Moon, the sequence of songs slides seamlessly from “Breathe” into “On the Run.” But on this January 1972 live rec
ording, the latter has yet to be developed. In its place is a piece known as “The Travel Sequence.” A somewhat formless jam, it’s nonetheless more conventionally musical than the abstract set pieces Pink Floyd had introduced onstage just a few years earlier. Built around a single chord, “The Travel Sequence” allows David Gilmour space to riff on his electric guitar; rather than play soaring single-note lead runs, he chooses to play chugging, melodic chord sequences redolent of the improvisational sections of Tommy, the Who’s own 1969 conceptual set piece. Arguably, Gilmour’s playing style on “The Travel Sequence” owes more to the style of Who guitarist-composer Peter Townshend than his own.
Simultaneous with Gilmour’s guitar riffing, Richard Wright plays an extended solo on Rhodes electric piano. As the jam unfolds, both men play with increased intensity. Meanwhile, drummer Mason and bassist Waters hold down a solid—if intentionally unspectacular—rhythmic foundation. As the seven-minute mark passes, the jam dissolves into silence.
After that extended period of silence, a ticking clock—or an audio facsimile of one—is heard. “Time” has begun. Unlike its eventual studio counterpart, this early version of “Time” does not feature Nick Mason playing rototoms, one of the song’s most distinctive features. Instead, a basic, two-note intro—with long spaces between the notes—unfolds. This version of the song has a dreamy feel, with little of the ferocity of the studio recording. It’s nearly three minutes before the vocal line begins, and when it does, the dual lead (David Gilmour and Richard Wright) has a languid, almost lazy texture. When Wright takes his solo vocals, he sings of “lying supine in the sunshine.”
David Gilmour’s lead guitar solo on “Time” is quite similar to the one he would eventually record for The Dark Side of the Moon, but in the context of the understated arrangement of “Time” here, it feels somewhat out of place. The song ends live onstage as it would on the album, with Wright and Gilmour harmonizing on one of Roger Waters’s best and most evocative lyric lines ever: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way / The time is gone, the song is over; thought I’d something more to say.”
“Breathe (Reprise)” follows, as it would on the album. But instead of Roger Waters’s lyrics, here the song features a bluesy David Gilmour lead guitar solo, accompanied by scat vocals that follow the same melodic line.
On The Dark Side of the Moon, the song “The Great Gig in the Sky” comes right after “Breathe (Reprise).” But for the debut performance of “Eclipse,” the song sequence features something quite different: an embryonic version of a Richard Wright instrumental known at the time under a number of titles, including “The Mortality Sequence.” Though it’s not clearly audible on the Brighton recording—other bootlegged shows from 1972 would capture the performance in improved fidelity—“The Mortality Sequence” includes tape playback of a man reading Bible verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and clips of speeches from British author and conservative religious activist Malcolm Muggeridge. The band’s most keen enthusiast of tape manipulation, Nick Mason had created loops of the spoken-word bits; the finished tape has a disorienting, psychedelic feel to it. As the tape plays, Rick Wright contributes a hymn-like melody on his Hammond organ. Just past the three-and-a-half-minute mark, a loud hissing sound begins; it’s considerably louder than the music being made onstage. A loud “thud” is heard. Wright wraps up the forlorn melody.
The sound of clanging coins and banging cash registers begins, but along with it is the sound of a second recording that sounds as if it’s spinning out of control. The second tape is playing a wobbling sound, and while it would have been difficult for the assembled audience to ascertain whether this was part of the show—Pink Floyd had long since developed a reputation for incorporating unusual sonic elements into its onstage performances—listening to the recording today, it’s clear that something has gone terribly wrong.
Nonetheless, Roger Waters gamely launches into the signature 7/4 bass line of what would go on to become one of Pink Floyd’s most well-known tunes, “Money.” Here, against the backdrop of the tape malfunctions—and taken at a dreadfully sluggish pace—the song is just short of a disaster. With little choice, since Waters has begun, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason join in for a stomping, near-metallic reading of the new song. Gilmour is either not singing at all, or his microphone is malfunctioning as well. Around the two-minute mark, the band succumbs to the inevitable and stops playing. The loud hissing continues unabated. Someone somewhere finds a way to turn it off, and after a few seconds of confused silence, the audience offers tepid applause.
While what would follow onstage isn’t captured on the bootlegger’s tape, a number of reporters were in attendance that night and documented in writing what had taken place. In a show review, NME’s Tony Stewart quoted Waters’s announcement to the audience: “That wasn’t pretty. We’ll fix that.” And after conferring with band mates and road crew, the bassist returned to the stage, announcing, “Due to severe mechanical and electric horror, we can’t do any more of that bit. So we’ll do something else.” Abandoning the evening’s plans, Pink Floyd would launch into its old set list, playing “Atom Heart Mother Suite,” and then after a break, continue with “Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” “One of These Days,” and “Echoes.” For an encore, the band would perform a four-year-old tune, “A Saucerful of Secrets.”
“Basically it was a big disappointment to use old stuff,” Nick Mason told Stewart backstage after the concert had ended. “But it couldn’t be helped. I think probably it was better to do that.” And while the NME reporter noted that some among the audience seemed unmoved by the concert, he came away impressed. “At no time during the performance were Floyd untogether,” he wrote. “The musicians go together like salt and vinegar on fish and chips—it is that sort of tasteful relationship.”
Stewart’s enthusiasm wasn’t shared by Andrew Means of rival music paper Melody Maker, who was also in attendance. “What their music lacked in framework and conception,” he wrote, “it seemed to be trying to compensate for with volume and aural clarity.”
The band would attempt The Dark Side of the Moon again the following night in nearby Portsmouth. This time, technical problems would be greatly diminished. And once again an audience member would make a recording of the entire performance.
Chapter 25
Any Colour You Like
The technical problems of the previous night’s concert had not diminished Pink Floyd’s resolve. From the opening moments of the Friday night show at Portsmouth’s Guildhall, the band would be in control of the electronics and effects so critical to the new set piece. The second attempt at performing The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety would proceed far more smoothly than the first.
An unreleased (and unauthorized) audience recording of the Portsmouth concert captures the entire performance for posterity, and it shows the band playing in a more assured manner than it had done the night before. The set opens with the “heartbeat” tape, proceeds into “Breathe,” giving way to “The Travel Sequence” and “Time.” But toward the end of “Time,” the instrumental reprise of “Breathe” has been altered; it now features lyrics in place of David Gilmour’s lead guitar and scat vocal of the night before. At this point in the development of The Dark Side of the Moon, the band is still tinkering with the music and arrangement, and Roger Waters is still writing and refining the work’s lyrics.
“The Mortality Sequence” (also sometimes known at this stage as “The Religion Song”) is a bit shorter for its second night. Richard Wright’s organ playing is assured as ever, but while the texture of the piece is appealing—and suitably evocative of a church-going experience—the melody itself is unremarkable. As Wright’s organ fades to silence, the taped cash register sounds that introduce “Money” play through the band’s PA system.
At this stage, “Money” still begins with Roger Waters’s unaccompanied bass guitar. But for the second night, the tapes are playing at the correct speed; serving in the role of a drumbeat, the c
ut-and-pasted sounds of coins and cash registers had been assembled to provide the song’s 7/4 time signature, and the musicians follow along. The jagged time signature adds an off-kilter feel to what is, at its core, a blues-based chord progression.
The instrumental midsection of “Money” features a searing David Gilmour lead guitar solo laid atop a stomping rhythm section. This part of the song builds upon the riff Pink Floyd developed as “Moonhead” and performed on BBC television for the 1969 moon landing. Fourteen months before its release on The Dark Side of the Moon, all of the elements that would make “Money” one of Pink Floyd’s most memorable songs are fully in place.
Without missing a beat, the band segues from “Money” directly into the world premiere of another new song, “Us and Them.” Richard Wright had composed the piano-based melody years earlier; an instrumental version had been recorded for use in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point, but it was not used. Originally known as “The Violent Sequence,” the tune would remain unused for nearly two years before being repurposed—with lyrics added by Roger Waters—as a centerpiece of The Dark Side of the Moon. “It’s sort of amazing to me now that we had that piece of music in 1969 when we recorded the music for Zabriskie Point,” said David Gilmour in a 2003 documentary. “And throughout Atom Heart Mother, Obscured by Clouds and the Meddle album, we didn’t dig it out and use it.” Calling it “a lovely piece of music,” he observed that “Us and Them” was “obviously waiting to be reborn” on The Dark Side of the Moon.