Pink Floyd All the Songs
Page 66
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Pink Floyd had to remix “Not Now John” for the American single because the words fuck all that are repeated three times in the backing vocals. On the American version David Gilmour and the backing singers had to make do with stuff all that, which is actually sung louder.
A copy of the Japanese single of “Not Now John/The Hero’s Return (Parts 1 and 2)” sold for $3,050 on eBay in July 2013.
Two Suns In The Sunset
Roger Waters / 5:19
Musicians
David Gilmour: electric rhythm guitars
Roger Waters: vocals, bass, acoustic guitar
Andy Bown: Hammond organ
Michael Kamen: piano
Raphael Ravenscroft: tenor saxophone
Andy Newmark: drums
Richard Millard: voice on the radio
Recorded
The Billiard Room, London: May–October 1982
Hook End Recording Studios, Checkendon: June, October 1982
Mayfair Recording Studios, London: June, October–November 1982; January 19, February 1983
Olympic Studios, London: June, September–October 1982
Abbey Road Studios, London: July 22 and 23, 1982
Eel Pie Studios, Twickenham: September 1982
RAK Studios, London: October 1982
Audio International Studios, London: January 26–30, 1983
Technical Team
Producers: Roger Waters, James Guthrie, Michael Kamen
Sound Engineers: James Guthrie, Andy Jackson
Assistant Sound Engineers: Andy Canelle, Mike Nocito, Jules Bowen
Genesis
Roger Waters concludes his concept album with an irredeemably apocalyptic song. “That was a thought I had, driving home one night, thinking we all sit around and talk about the possibility of accidents or—as I put it in the song—people just getting so bloody angry that finally somebody pushes a button. Well, the song’s all about that moment when suddenly it happens […] It’s very easy to go ‘Oh yes, well, there may be an accident and the holocaust might happen.’”36
“Two Suns in the Sunset” comes upon us with all its morbid cruelty. The second sun, which appears in the east even though it is dusk, is the nuclear explosion. The narrator, powerless to do anything, watches in the rearview mirror from the driver’s seat of his car, his head whirling with feelings of regret: I think of all the good things/That we have left undone, […] Could be the human race is run. The end is drawing near: As the windshield melts/My tears evaporate. His final thought has an implacable logic to it: Foe and friend/We are all equal in the end.
Equal in the face of death and eternal obliteration: the Pink Floyd songwriter is thinking of the Cold War, embodied at the time by the nuclear arms race. Hence the importance of electing responsible men and women to the highest functions of state. Was Roger Waters thinking of Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady,” whose neocolonialist warmongering in the South Atlantic had alarmed him? Or of Ronald Reagan, who had arrived at the White House having played cowboys for the Hollywood cameras? Unless it was meant as a subliminal message to the masses: don’t be afraid to live…
Production
The sounds of traffic that marked the end of “Not Now John” also provide the background to the first chords we hear from Roger Waters’s acoustic guitar. His strumming is accompanied by Andy Bown on the Hammond organ. The drums soon make their entry, the ride cymbal leading in. It is not Nick Mason wielding the drumsticks, but Andy Newmark, a fantastic drummer whom Waters decided to engage to stand in for Mason, who couldn’t come to grips with the various changes in time signature. “Rhythmically, there are some 5/4 timings thrown in so the downbeat changes from bar to bar and it’s confusing for Nick,” Waters explained. “His brain doesn’t work that way. That’s why he didn’t play on “Mother” on The Wall.”81 It is true that, in this song, the metrics of Waters’s lyrics have priority over the metrics of the music, meaning the musicians have to be able to follow the twists and turns of his thought processes, which is no mean feat. But Newmark, with his experience of working with artists as diverse as Sly and the Family Stone, George Benson, and John Lennon, seems to cope well. Waters accompanies him with a very good bass line, Michael Kamen comes in on the piano from time to time, and David Gilmour plays chords highly colored by a deep tremolo, probably on a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop, slightly overmixed (on the left at the beginning, on the right from 1:02 onward). Obviously, for the concluding song on The Final Cut, it is Roger Waters who provides the lead vocal. His voice, with added delay, alternates between quiet and high-pitched, strained passages. On the bridge, especially, (from 2:18) he maybe overdoes the trait, causing his singing to become rigid and tense. David Gilmour’s Gibson suddenly becomes more prominent, supporting the rhythm guitar with distorted passages. There are various interventions during the course of this bridge: an apathetic oh no! (2:23), a yell (2:31), a child’s voice (Daddy! Daddy! at 2:34), and children’s cries (2:46). But unlike the sound illustrations found on other songs on the album, these seem to fall flat.
After a final verse, Raphael Ravenscroft embarks on a superb solo on the tenor saxophone, very inspired and magnificently performed. During this coda the traffic noises heard at the beginning of the song become audible again; then, from 4:36, we hear a voice on the radio which, with black humor, announces the latest weather forecast: And now the weather. Tomorrow will be cloudy with scattered showers spreading from the east… with an expected high of 4000 degrees Celsius… This voice was recorded by Richard Millard, of Audio International Studios in Marylebone, London, who also provided the radio voice for the first song on The Final Cut, “The Post War Dream.”
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Raphael Ravenscroft, who was one of the sidemen working with Roger Waters and the other two members of Pink Floyd on The Final Cut, is known for his masterful saxophone solo on “Baker Street,” the 1978 Gerry Rafferty hit.
A
MOMENTARY
LAPSE OF
REASON
ALBUM
A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: September 7, 1987
Label: EMI
RECORD NUMBER: CDP 7 48068 2 (CD version), EMD 1003 (vinyl version)
Number 3 (United Kingdom), on the charts for 34 weeks; number 3 (United States)
Signs Of Life / Learning 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
A Momentary Lapse of Reason: New Album, New Aesthetics
Even before The Final Cut made it to number 1 on the UK charts, there was one thing the three remaining members of Pink Floyd agreed on: that they would not work together any longer. Or more precisely, Roger Waters would no longer record with David Gilmour and Nick Mason. It seems the idea of a tour to promote the album never crossed the three musicians’ minds. “It would have been hard to imagine a show that could follow The Wall, anyway. But it was another factor in how David and I viewed the future,” Nick Mason explained. “Both David and myself regarded playing live and touring as an integral part of being in the band. If being part of a Roger-led Floyd meant that there would be no live shows […] and only aggravation in the recording studio, the future prospect seemed distinctly unappealing.”5
So solo projects started to take priority. One year after The Final Cut, Roger Waters released The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (May 1984), the concept he had proposed to his bandmates at the same time as The Wall. He then embarked on a tour comprising thirty-six concerts from April 16, 1984 (Stockholm) to April 14, 1985 (Lakeland, Florida), with, notably, Eric Clapton on the guitar for the 1984 shows. It was around this time, in June 1985 to be precise, that he and Steve O’Rourke parted company. This divorce came about after Waters announced he wanted to renegotiate his own contract but keep the negotiations secret. But, as Nick Mason would later comment, “Steve felt�
�both on moral grounds and also probably for financial reasons—that he was obliged to inform the rest of us.”5 Waters, feeling betrayed, appointed as his new manager Peter Rudge, who had previously worked with the Rolling Stones and the Who. Waters began work on his personal project, writing the music for the Jimmy T. Murakami animated movie When the Wind Blows, released in 1986. Nick Mason recorded the album Profiles (1985) with Rick Fenn, the guitarist from 10cc, which David Gilmour was also involved in (vocals). As for the latter, he released his second solo album, the excellent About Face, on March 5, 1984 (in the United Kingdom), with Bob Ezrin on production, James Guthrie on sound, and featuring such distinguished musicians as Pino Palladino (bass) and Jeff Porcaro (drums). Another sign that a split was in the cards: Gilmour was the only member of Pink Floyd to participate in Live Aid on July 13, 1985, as guitarist for… Bryan Ferry.
Waters’s Departure
In December 1985, Waters announced that he wished to leave Pink Floyd and sent a letter to the management of EMI and CBS in which he asked to be released from his contractual obligations, invoking the “leaving member” clause. In truth, this did not come as a great surprise to David Gilmour and Nick Mason, and they certainly had no intention of allowing him to prevent the band continuing on the pretext that he was its principal creative force. “If I’m honest,” Roger Waters disclosed in June 2004, “my idea was that we should go our separate ways. What actually happened was, the reason that I finally left, signed the letter […] was because they [CBS Records] threatened me with the fact that we had a contract with CBS Records and that part of the contract could be construed to mean that we had a product commitment with CBS and if we didn’t go on producing product, they could (a) sue us and (b) withhold royalties on that product if we didn’t make any more records [with them]. I said, ‘That’s ridiculous. We’d never have signed a contract like that.’ They showed me the clause, and it was [indeed] ambivalent.”119 So according to Waters, he left Pink Floyd in order to avoid having to file a lawsuit that would inevitably have ruined him had he sought to prevent Gilmour and Mason from continuing to record for EMI and CBS under the Pink Floyd name. There was also the contract that EMI had asked him to sign when he composed the soundtrack to When the Wind Blows (for which he alone is credited), under which he had undertaken not to stand in the way of Gilmour and Mason’s projects. It would have been hard for him to imagine back then—given that he had held sway over the band practically since Wish You Were Here—that Pink Floyd could ever carry on for any length of time without him…
The Pink Floyd Venture Continues
The idea of a new album bearing the Pink Floyd name soon took root in David Gilmour’s mind, especially after the partial failure of the About Face promotional tour (March 31 to July 16, 1984), in which two concerts (in Frankfurt and Nice) had to be canceled due to poor ticket sales. This setback brought it home to him that the public was less interested in the individual projects of any of the band members). So Gilmour made the decision to continue with the Pink Floyd venture, especially as Waters had stung him by claiming that he wouldn’t be capable of making it work. Gilmour stood up for himself, arguing that after twenty years in the band, his determination to continue was perfectly legitimate: “I’m 44 now, too old to start all over again at this stage of my career,” he declared, “and I don’t see any reason why I should. Pink Floyd is not some sacred or hallowed thing that never made bad or boring records in the past. And I’m not destroying anything by trying to carry on!”142 Nick Mason stood by him, confident that he had what it would take to pursue the venture without Waters. As Nick recalled, “David had in fact made up his own mind quite early on, and had been working on a number of demos.”5 Gilmour had several songs up his sleeve, some just an outline, others at a more advanced stage, and he had also got back in touch with some of his old contacts.
Among them was Bob Ezrin, who agreed to come back on board eight years after The Wall. Ironically, Ezrin had already been contacted by Waters, who wanted him to co-produce Radio K.A.O.S (1997). According to Nick Mason, the reasons why Ezrin chose Pink Floyd rather than Waters had to do with incompatible time schedules and the fact that he would have had to spend too long out of circulation working flat out with the irascible creator of The Wall. Waters, his ego bruised, viewed this defection as a second betrayal, and from then on would refer to his ex-bandmates as “muffins!” After all, in February 1986, before Gilmour contacted him, Bob Ezrin had agreed to work on Radio K.A.O.S., and he and Waters had even set a date, April 16 in the United Kingdom, to start production of the album. But strangely, a fortnight prior to that date, Ezrin was nowhere to be found. After trying numerous times without success, Waters eventually managed to get hold of him on the telephone. “My wife says she’ll divorce me if I go to work in England!”140 Ezrin told him. Waters was dumbfounded, but it wasn’t long before he realized the real reason Ezrin had turned him down: the Canadian producer had gone over to the opposing side. This decision—which was somewhat illogical since he would still have to come to the United Kingdom to work with Gilmour—seems to have been motivated primarily by his misgivings at the prospect of what was bound to be a fraught relationship, given Waters’s intransigent character: “Dave didn’t demand things like Roger did,”140 he explained, hinting at Waters’s lack of consideration for his colleagues’ private lives. It was also motivated by a fear of his authoritarianism: “At the time I met with Roger, I said I wanted to do the album, but I had an instinctive sense that he was being too rigid and intense in his attitudes about the project.”140
The Return of Bob Ezrin
So Bob Ezrin and Gilmour joined forces once again to produce the band’s thirteenth album, the first without Waters. Would they be equal to the task? Ezrin’s initial idea was to edge Gilmour in the direction of his own latest musical passion: hip-hop! The Canadian producer was very taken with the music of Africa Bambaataa. The guitarist, pretty taken aback, apparently exclaimed: “Oh my God, that would be terrible.” “He couldn’t believe it,” Ezrin went on. “He hated the idea.”141 Ezrin eventually listened to reason: this was not what the fans were expecting from the Floyd, especially after Waters’s departure, so he encouraged Gilmour to revive the kind of sound that had made the band famous.
Among the other musicians involved in the project were keyboardist Jon Carin, whom Gilmour had met when they were both part of Bryan Ferry’s lineup at Live Aid, the former Roxy Music guitarist, Phil Manzanera, and… Rick Wright. “I was in Greece,” David Gilmour related, “and I think I had a visit from Rick’s then wife, Franka […], saying, ‘I hear you’re starting a new album. Please, please, please can Rick be part of it?’ I left it for a while because I wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing before I got anyone’s hopes too high.”1 In fact, quite apart from the tensions that had emerged between the keyboardist and the other band members during the rather confrontational recording sessions for The Wall, they also faced a legal problem: the “leaving member” clause that Rick Wright had signed prevented him from officially rejoining the band. “I remember having a meeting with them [Gilmour and Mason] and Steve [O’Rourke] in a restaurant in Hampstead,” the keyboardist recalled. “I think they wanted to see how I was. I passed the test.”1 All the same, he would only have a secondary part to play when it came to the recording of the album.