by Bill Kopp
Howe notes the progress that Pink Floyd made in the years between Syd Barrett’s departure and the making of The Dark Side of the Moon. “They learned as they went along,” he says. “They got more confident, and they continued to be able to team up on ideas. I guess that’s what musicians do: they make it look easy, and then they keep on doing it.”
Drummer Willie Wilson has as close to an insider’s perspective on Pink Floyd as anyone outside the core group. He played with David Gilmour in Jokers Wild, worked on sessions for both of Syd Barrett’s solo albums, played on Gilmour’s solo albums, and served as the drummer in the “surrogate band” on Pink Floyd’s The Wall live dates. He was also present for countless Pink Floyd studio sessions over the years. Today, he and David Gilmour remain good friends.
As such, Wilson is less focused on Pink Floyd as a band, and more on its members as living, breathing people. Unlike bands such as the Who and Led Zeppelin—both legendary for destroying hotel rooms, driving cars into swimming pools, throwing televisions out of high-rise windows, and such bored-rock-star antics—he says that Pink Floyd “weren’t living the rock and roll lifestyle as such. There’s not a lot of dirt to dig on them, really.”
Longtime host of the syndicated radio program Floydian Slip, Craig Bailey has his own ideas about the group’s appeal. “There is a mystery surrounding Pink Floyd,” he says, having to do with “the fact that you rarely saw them on their album covers. Not to mention the fact that their music often times played with your head.”
Remarking on the creative journey the group followed in its post–Syd Barrett incarnation, he observes, “If I didn’t know anything, and you played me something from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and then you played me Dark Side of the Moon, I would have no reason to believe that that was the same band.”
He sees Meddle’s side-long “Echoes” as a turning point in Pink Floyd’s development. Noting that the work began as a series of unconnected “nothings,” he points out that “eventually it evolved into this huge epic, where one piece flows into the next into the next. And that’s very much like the second side of The Dark Side of the Moon and the way that it behaves.”
Bailey has produced and broadcast more than 1,100 episodes of Floydian Slip. In the years since his program debuted, he’s had time to ponder the enduring popularity of Pink Floyd’s music, but the specifics remain elusive. “There’s a certain ‘secret sauce’ that no one can quite put their finger on” about the group, he says. He does point to the timeless quality of the group’s 1973 album. “If I had never heard The Dark Side of the Moon and you played it for me,” he says, “I would think that’s something that was made today.”
And it’s Roger Waters’s lyrics for Dark Side that come in for special praise from Bailey. “If you take the time to listen to the lyrics, they’re universal and timeless,” he says. “They deal with huge issues that anybody can understand. No matter your gender, your race, what age you grow up in, what part of the world you grow up in, we all understand ‘Us and Them.’ We understand money, we understand the fact that time is passing and time is finite. All of these—the broad issues of The Dark Side of the Moon—are eternal.”
Robyn Hitchcock prefers the Syd Barrett–era music of Pink Floyd to the music they would make after his departure, but he appreciates some of the latter’s qualities. “Once they’d got rid of Syd—or Syd had got rid of himself—they started performing songs in a more organized, less psychotic or intense way,” he says. Hitchcock cites what he calls the “very listenable” live version of “Astronomy Dominé” on Ummagumma as an example.
“They just straightened it all out as everything itself was straightening out,” Hitchcock says. “People were realizing their limitations with psychedelics, and discarding the hype decidedly.” Pink Floyd “should have changed their name after Barrett went, because what they did was so different,” he says. “The Piper at the Gates Of Dawn doesn’t appear to be an ancestor in any way of The Dark Side of the Moon, though Barrett himself is obviously a key inspiration for it.” With his trademark faculty for memorable phrases, Robyn Hitchcock describes Syd Barrett as “part of Pink Floyd’s acceleration; he was the rocket booster that got Pink Floyd off into the stratosphere and then just fell away.”
Hitchcock places Pink Floyd into context of the popular and political culture in which it existed. “The counterculture had this enormous momentum between 1966 and ’69,” he says. “Then it kind of coasted, and then Blue Meanies counter attacked; [UK Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher got in and everything got darker and darker and darker. And so we now have Donald Trump and Theresa May. And the journey from liftoff to dystopia was chronicled by no other act as acutely as by Pink Floyd.”
Chapter 29
Oh, By the Way
With a keen sense of self-awareness—in light of the fact that all of Pink Floyd’s music in the coming decade would bear the overwhelming stamp of his (as opposed to the group’s) personal creative vision—Roger Waters said in 2003 of the group’s post–Dark Side output, “It’s not to say we didn’t do some good work, but the good work that we did was actually all about a lot of the negative aspects of what went on after we’d achieved the goal.”
In the wake of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd truly did find itself creatively spent. The extended period of time developing Dark Side as a stage presentation and then a studio album had left little time for initiating other new compositions. So while the band would have no problems from a live performance standpoint—“Time” and “Money” are what fans were paying good money to see and hear, after all—the idea of a studio project was more daunting.
A long-gestating project called Household Objects was initiated but eventually abandoned due to its ponderous and time-intensive nature. Simply put, the concept behind Household Objects was to create music without the use of musical instruments. This was an age long before the advent of sampling; recording and sculpting the sounds made from rubbing wine glasses, tapping on spoons, stretching rubber bands, and the like took countless hours. More frustrating was the fact that once these sounds were bent toward musical purposes, they ended up sounding rather ordinary. Bits of the Household Objects tapes would appear as bonus tracks on subsequent reissues of 1970s-era Pink Floyd albums, and one notable section formed the basis for part of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” the epic centerpiece of 1975’s Wish You Were Here.
Another project explored but not taken on was the idea of returning to work on film soundtracks. Alejandro Jodorowsky, director of El Topo, had secured the rights to make a motion picture adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction novel Dune. Initial meetings between the director and Pink Floyd were not successful, and the idea was abandoned. In the end, Jodorowsky—the second director to attempt to tackle the book—would be unsuccessful in his efforts to complete the film. His rights to the work lapsed in 1982, and a David Lynch–directed Dune would be released in 1984.
The music created by Pink Floyd in the post–The Dark Side of the Moon era would overwhelmingly reflect the sensibility and larger concerns of bassist Roger Waters. The success of Dark Side—and the ongoing need for new material—meant that Waters’s position as Pink Floyd’s sole lyricist was now ironclad. While there’s no denying the poignancy and weight of much of Waters’s post–Dark Side lyrics, the creative center of gravity within Pink Floyd had shifted. Many critics point to 1975’s Wish You Were Here as musically superior to its predecessor, and the album certainly draws upon the lessons learned from earlier projects. The nine-part “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”—split across both sides of the original LP—is a sonic odyssey full of many of the elements that had made The Dark Side of the Moon such a success: Richard Wright’s deeply textured keyboards (with a growing use of synthesizers), soaring, extended guitar solos from David Gilmour, and generous amounts of Dick Parry’s soulful saxophone. And Wish You Were Here would be a massive success in the marketplace, though not on the level of the groundbreaking album that came before it.
Curiously—in light of Wish You Were Here’s reputation as an ode to Syd Barrett—Pink Floyd sound engineer Brian Humphries asserted in a 1975 interview that the band wished to distance itself from Barrett’s legacy. “As far as Syd goes,” he told Circus’s Alan Betrock, “the band really want to let the past lie. That was then and now is now.”
The members of Pink Floyd would grow farther apart as individuals in the years after making The Dark Side of the Moon. Doubtless part of that would have been a product of the group’s staggering financial success. As they all approached their thirtieth birthdays, the members of Pink Floyd were settling into adulthood, with families and interests beyond the group. And into a situation that at times resembled a creative vacuum, the fertile mind of Roger Waters would fill that space.
In its own way, 1977’s Animals would be Pink Floyd’s answer to the burgeoning punk rock scene. Still very much in line with the band’s earlier music in terms of theme and sonic textures, Animals is possessed of a harsher, more metallic, and sinister demeanor in both its music and subject matter. Waters’s lyrics metaphorically divide all of humanity into three categories: pigs, sheep, and dogs. While David Gilmour would continue to sing lead on much of the band’s material—paving the way in later years for his billing as “the voice and guitar of Pink Floyd”—there would be a sense of disconnect between Waters’s artistic vision for the band and the concerns and interests of Wright, Mason, and Gilmour. Put simply, the music that Pink Floyd made in the post–The Dark Side of the Moon era feels less like the product of a band, and closer to the fruit of one man’s artistic vision, with expert help from some exceedingly talented and creative assistants. While that often made for some richly textured and compelling music, it would not be a recipe for harmony within the group. (It’s worth noting that at no time since Roger Waters’s departure from the band in the early 1980s has David Gilmour ever performed so much as a single note from Animals live onstage.)
In the late 1970s, perhaps owing at least in part to Roger Waters’s growing dominance of Pink Floyd, two of the group’s other members would each venture outside the group to make a solo album. Released in 1978, David Gilmour features the guitarist’s longtime friend Willie Wilson on drums, along with bassist Rick Wills. Around the time of the album’s release, Gilmour told Circus’s Shel Kagan that he felt the need to step out from behind the shadow of Pink Floyd. “A lot of people tend to cling together and say ‘we live for the group’ and at the beginning you need that. But later on you need other things.”
Richard Wright’s Wet Dream would be released in September 1978, four months after David Gilmour. Six of its ten tunes are instrumentals. The musicianship—featuring guitarist Snowy White, an auxiliary live player on Pink Floyd’s 1977 Animals tour—is first-rate, and Wright’s songs have a jazz-leaning ambience. Wet Dream is largely downtempo, and the keyboardist’s vocals have a consistently melancholy air.
After the solo album side projects, the four members of Pink Floyd would reconvene to begin work on the band’s eleventh studio release. But despite the staggering success of 1979’s The Wall, that double-album is even less of a creatively collaborative work than were Wish You Were Here or Animals. Working with an outside producer (for the first time since the Ummagumma and Meddle era a decade previous), Bob Ezrin, Waters had assumed nearly total control of Pink Floyd. Of the twenty-six tracks on the album, David Gilmour receives co-writer credit on but three; most of the album features both music and lyrics by Roger Waters (one track, “The Trial,” is a co-write between Waters and producer Ezrin). None of Nick Mason’s tape experiments would find a place in Waters’s start-to-finish conceptual story line, and—in a set of circumstances that illustrated the degree to which the rest of the band had abdicated responsibilities—keyboardist Richard Wright had been summarily fired from the band by Waters during the making of the album.
Recorded around the same time as David Gilmour and Wet Dream but held for release until 1981, Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports is easily the oddest solo outing from a Pink Floyd member. Arguably, it’s not a Mason album at all: jazz pianist Carla Bley composed the album’s eight songs and co-produced the album with Mason. (The drummer had previously ventured briefly into outside production, working in the studio control room for Music for Pleasure, the 1977 album from punk rock tricksters The Damned.) Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports sounds nothing like Pink Floyd, but should be of interest to fans of avant-garde jazz.
1983’s portentously titled The Final Cut would, for a time, signal the end of Pink Floyd. A Roger Waters solo album in all but name, The Final Cut finds the participation of drummer Nick Mason and guitarist David Gilmour reduced even further than had been the case on The Wall. With Richard Wright gone from what remained of the group, session players would handle the keyboard parts. Other than a handful of standout tunes—“Southampton Dock,” “Two Suns in the Sunset”—The Final Cut is short on melody. Its production values are stunning, and Waters’s lyrics are compelling, but there remains a hollow core at the musical heart of the album. There would be no tour to promote the disc, and the group effectively ceased to exist upon release of The Final Cut.
In 1984, David Gilmour would release his second solo album, About Face. That well-received disc showed the guitarist in a situation not unlike the one George Harrison had found himself in back in 1970 with All Things Must Pass: with his own songwriting contributions largely unwelcome within his band, Gilmour had a surfeit of quality material from which to create a solo album. Gilmour would tour with a band of his own in support of the album.
That same year, Waters released his solo debut, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. Despite the presence of master guitarist Eric Clapton, Hitchhiking is most notable for its lack of memorable tunes. Arguably even more ponderous than The Final Cut—though meticulously produced—Hitchhiking suggested to Pink Floyd fans of that era that although Roger Waters may have been the band’s guiding lyrical light for nearly a decade, Gilmour’s music made for a much more enjoyable listening experience.
That perspective was not lost on Gilmour himself; amid legal wrangling (and very public disputes with Waters), the guitarist decided to reactivate a Waters-less Pink Floyd with the pointedly titled A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987. That album featured Gilmour and Mason, with Wright returning once again as a paid employee. A large cast of session musicians was also employed. While AMLOR would be criticized as a too-self-conscious-by-half attempt to revive the Pink Floyd “sound,” there would be no denying its success in that regard. The album top-tenned all over the globe, and a massive world tour would follow.
Pink Floyd’s live band in 1987 was quite large, an early example of a trend in rock music of assembling a massive musical cast so as to be able to re-create every nuance of the studio versions. The band’s visuals were second to none, and—unlike The Wall dates—the band played not only most of its latest release but material from earlier albums as well.
Seven years would pass before Pink Floyd would release another studio album. The Division Bell was a notable improvement on all levels: Gilmour’s songwriting skills had grown further, thanks in no small part to the collaboration with his girlfriend (later wife), Polly Samson. Wright was back in tow as a full member and involved himself in writing Pink Floyd music for the first time in a decade. Drummer Mason sank his creative teeth into the album’s soundscapes. Another tour followed—Pink Floyd’s last, as it would turn out—and it met with even larger-scale success.
Meanwhile, Waters continued his solo career; Radio K.A.O.S. had been released in 1987, followed by 1992’s Amused to Death. Though he would tour with his own band—performing large chunks of Pink Floyd’s back catalog—Amused to Death would be the last new rock studio album from Waters for nearly a quarter century, until 2017’s Is This the Life We Really Want?
Pink Floyd did seem to bury the hatchet in 2005, though. Moved by Bob Geldof’s efforts to combat world poverty, the massive Live 8 concert festival was staged in July of that year, with si
multaneous concerts in nine cities across the globe. An undisputed highlight of the London concert was a reunion of Waters, Wright, Gilmour, and Mason, who took the stage to play five songs from the 1970s part of their catalog. While every other act would be introduced before performing, the briefly reunited Pink Floyd truly needed—and received—no introduction.
Live 8 would be the final time that Pink Floyd’s longest-running and most well-known lineup would come together. Mason would occasionally appear at a Gilmour show; Wright would play on Gilmour’s albums and tour as his keyboardist until his death in 2008 at age sixty-five. Waters continued to tour, mounting modern-day performances of The Wall, often with all-star musical casts. Gilmour and Waters even played a few songs together at shows in 2010 and 2011.
All was quiet on the Pink Floyd front for many years, until the 2014 release of The Endless River. Back around the time of release of The Division Bell, Mason had mentioned in an interview the existence of near-finished music that didn’t make it onto that album. Describing the music as “ambient” in nature, Mason predicted it would eventually see release in some form. That release did come, albeit two decades later, as The Endless River.
2016 brought perhaps the biggest and most unexpected surprise in the now half-century history of Pink Floyd. A sprawling twenty-five-hour set (including CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and memorabilia), The Early Years 1965–1972 shone a light on the band’s least-explored period. And the existence of The Early Years helped emphasize the previously overlooked development of Pink Floyd’s music in the years between Syd Barrett’s 1968 departure and the creation of 1973’s landmark The Dark Side of the Moon. Viewed in hindsight, that musical development seems at times to be quite linear: Pink Floyd progressed from strength to strength, learning from its mistakes and building upon its creative successes. Live concert set pieces like “The Man and the Journey” whetted the group’s appetite for long-form works that would hang together conceptually. Epic compositions such as “A Saucerful of Secrets,” “Atom Heart Mother Suite,” and “Echoes” demonstrated Pink Floyd’s skill at linking discrete pieces of music into a larger sonic framework. The more personal writing style that lyricist Roger Waters would develop beginning with Ummagumma’s “Grantchester Meadows” and “If” signaled a growing understanding of the value of meaningful lyrics. Though they could not have known so at the time, all of these qualities would serve to move Pink Floyd along on the creative timeline that culminated in 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon.