by Will Romano
For the opening “One of These Days,” Waters and Gilmour play complementary bass riffs (fed through a Binson Echorec, an Italian-made delay unit), which fit together like pieces of a sonic puzzle. Nick Mason sounds like a Sesame Street character when he belts out, around the 3:38 mark, “One of these days I am going to cut you into little pieces,” seemingly changing the complexion of the song from midtempo, groove-based rocker to anthem for a serial killer. (The song was, quite appropriately, made up of little pieces and hard edits were concealed by Mason’s sonic cymbal swells.)
More sonic expansion follows: Gilmour’s “A Pillow of Winds,” featuring the soon-to-be-classic double-tracked vocal effect, is a piece of music that falls somewhere between British folk, church, psychedelia, and blues.
“Fearless,” a song about conquering impossible odds, features a football crowd singing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (from the musical Carousel, based on Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom).
The carefree “San Tropez” (a track that originally featured Gilmour on bass and Waters on guitar), as its title suggests, feels very much like a prewar bluesy jazz jam evoking bygone ditties of the French Riviera, sun, and sand.
The country blues number “Seamus” features Gilmour’s dog of the same name (and is spiritually and musically somewhere between Memphis, ’40s Chicago, the Mississippi Delta, and Great Britain’s motor city, Birmingham).
Finally, a twenty-three-and-a-half-minute “Echoes,” which takes up the entire second side of the original LP, is as much a song about Darwinism (and instinctual knowledge) as human connectedness. The song’s impressionistic sounds recall music of a distant past while conjuring images of futuristic worlds, foretelling of music to be made for upcoming releases such as 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon and 1975’s Wish You Were Here.
“They could spend literally hours on just a few measures of one song,” says producer Mike Butcher, who engineered some of the Meddle sessions at Morgan Studios. “I can remember one session where they just sat around for hours waiting to be inspired, but nothing was coming. It was a bit like a Monty Python skit: One of them would have an idea, present it to the band, and then someone would say, ‘No, no. We can’t do that.’ And that idea was dead.”
“There was a point where we sat about not knowing what to do,” Rick Wright said in a 1972 interview.3 “Then Meddle came, and since then we’ve been quite excited about what we’ve been doing.”
“Somebody like Pink Floyd went into the studio and what comes out is material that’s different than they had imagined,” says Butcher.
Meddle helped to establish Floyd’s massive appeal (it soared to number three in Britain in November 1971; number seventy in the States) and clearly set the stage for succeeding records.
But with popularity came inner turmoil—the kind that would eventually tear the band apart in later years. With increasing regularity, Waters became the point man (and on Meddle he either wrote or cowrote every song). But Gilmour was clearly one of the most talented musicians in the band (along with Wright, largely because of his restraint). Whose instincts were better? Who would, and could, step back for the sake of the song? Who would or could inject himself into a situation for the better? Inevitably, heads would butt—and they did.
“The friction between Roger Waters and the rest of the band was definitely going on at that time,” adds Roger Quested, head engineer for the Meddle sessions at Morgan. ”I suppose I had the same sense of humor as Roger, and when he was doing vocals, I was encouraged by the rest of the band to give him a ribbing over his singing.”
Infinite appeal: Floyd’s 1969 expansive double record, Ummagumma, reflects the scope of the band’s cosmic groove.
“They were surprised that anyone had talked to Roger that way,” confirms Butcher. “Meddle was really Roger Waters’s album as far as I am concerned. It really establishes what he would be doing later on. He was very much the boss, as far as I could see, on that album. He would be sitting at the console next to the engineer, when he wasn’t playing, and would be active, like a producer would, moving faders up and down. You could see that what Roger was doing was accepted by the band. Or, at least, it seemed to be accepted by the band.”
RELICS
By the early 1970s, Floyd was the center of all kinds of activity: In 1971, they had released a career retrospective via EMI/Starline, titled Relics, which, like its name, has been rendered outdated. But in its time, it proved useful for its inclusion of the two early Barrett-era singles, “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play.”
More importantly, Floyd had begun writing and recording music for The Dark Side of the Moon (and performing it onstage), had created music for film and ballet, and were the subject of a concert film: Adrian Maben’s Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, filmed in October 1971 with the aid of twenty-four-track recording equipment.
Pompeii, a cinematic experience Melody Maker said “gels beautifully,” features the band performing in an empty ancient Roman amphitheater, as well as studio footage of Floyd recording music for the upcoming The Dark Side of the Moon.
Though the film wouldn’t be released until 1974, in retrospect, seeing Floyd in this setting, hearing the nearly fully formed musical ideas emanating from Waters, Gilmour, and Wright lends credence to the theory that The Dark Side of the Moon was a totally inspired project. It was obvious something big was coming, but just how big no one could have guessed.
SHOOTING FOR THE MOON
The Dark Side of the Moon—a title inspired by Barrett (as in a description of the predicament and location in which his Pink Floyd bandmates had left him)—is the brilliant culmination of everything that had come before it, while reflecting the artistic growth of the post-Barrett Floyd.
The Dark Side of the Moon is as much an examination of the twentieth-century British psyche, the everyday stresses applied to that psyche, as a descent into madness and an examination of the temporal nature of time and space, sanity versus insanity, and the movement toward materialism—not spirituality—in modern society.
It’s also a combination of polar opposites: the “eternal” sun (representing birth and the boundless potential of youth) and the symbolism and mysterious pull of its lunar companion (i.e., aging, dementia, and death). It’s hard to imagine one without the other. In fact, in astrological, astronomical, and biological terms, it’s impossible.
Waters seized upon the conceptual void left by David Gilmour’s lack of lyrical contributions to Dark Side and was clearly on a mission to rid the band of its spaced-out lyrics in order to make a more universal record. Waters distills Barrett’s bizarre, LSD-INDUCED insights into universally understood terms and concepts of isolation, death, fear, hope, war/conflict, existential angst, love, and dementia, which beckon the listener to question his or her own sanity.
The record opens with “Speak to Me,” which features a looped kick-drum pattern (approximating a heartbeat), random voices speaking about madness, the ticking sounds of clocks (at various speeds), cash register rings, the cries of singer Clare Torry, backward chords, hair-raising laughter, and the rhythmic pulses of what sounds like a jackhammer (garnered via manipulation of two EMS VCS-3 Synthi-AK synths). It’s a maelstrom of sights and sounds previewing for the listener all that he or she will experience throughout the course of the long player.
SYD SHINES ON
After he was nudged out of Pink Floyd, Barrett was comanaged by Peter Jenner and Andrew King, who were hot to revive the troubled troubadour’s career. Though Barrett attempted to make recordings (on some of which he was backed by the Soft Machine) in 1968, after his exit from Floyd, sessions were wayward and sporadic. This material wouldn’t see the light of day until 1970’s The Madcap Laughs, and that was only with the help of David Gilmour and Roger Waters.
“I have very mixed views about Syd’s solo work,” says Jenner. “I think it’s a shadow of what it once was. I’ve always used the analogy of a trolley bus not making a sound and co
ming out of a thick fog. People in the street are not able to see the top of it. Then when it finally got to its stop or destination you would see it only to watch it disappear into the fog again. I kept hearing bits of Syd and then it would disappear and then a bit more would come out and then disappear into the fog again.”
Barrett had turned up for a 1969 session during the making of former Soft Machine bassist and Barrett fan Kevin Ayers’s Joy of a Toy, though this session, too had been lost to the mists of time.
Toward the end of 1970, Syd continued to write painful, disturbing, and Lewis Carroll—inspired childlike songs such as “Effervescing Elephant,” “Rats,” “Gigolo Aunt,” “Baby Lemonade,” and “Two of a Kind,” which appear on his second album (produced by Gilmour and Wright), titled simply Barrett.
Barrett’s material would crop up periodically on official and bootlegged releases alike, such as on 1988’s The Peel Sessions, 1989’s Opel, 1994’s Crazy Diamond boxed set, 2004’s The Radio One Sessions (an extended version of the Peel Sessions disc), and 2009’s Rhamadam.
In July 2006, Syd Barrett died from complications of diabetes. The myths and legends surrounding his life, work, and mental state continue to grow to this day.
“There are pop musicians who have taken a lot from Syd,” says friend and filmmaker Anthony Stern. “Syd will become more famous in his death than in his life. It will be unstoppable.”
Syd Barrett, The Madcap Laughs (1970): “Syd was very difficult,” remembers David Gilmour. “The guy was in trouble.”
As “Speak to Me” ends, it slides into “Breathe”—a meditation on the value of slowing down life in order to appreciate what’s around us.
“On the Run” follows, marked by Mason’s sixteenth-note hi-hat pattern and the VCS-3. The hypnotic, sequenced wave is joined by maniacal laughter, a plane crash, a helicopter buzz, and briskly moving footsteps, among other noises, seemingly symbolizing the everyday events and phobias that make up the business and busy-ness of life.
The following song, “Time,” with lead vocals by Gilmour and Wright, is alight with ringing alarm clocks (the same heard at the opening of the record), as if issuing us a wake-up call. (Mason’s chasmic rototom performance echoes the infinity of space, adding weight and significance to the message.)
“I suddenly thought at twenty-nine,” Waters said, “‘Hang on, it’s happening, it has been right from the beginning, and there isn’t suddenly a line when the training stops and life starts. . . .’ The idea of ‘Time’ is similar to ‘Breathe.’ To be here now, this is it.”
“Breathe Reprise,” which is essentially the last verse of “Breathe” deferred, concerns our fears regarding the Great Beyond. Rick Wright’s stark jazzy and classical chord sequence and Gilmour’s slowhanded slide guitar lend “The Great Gig in the Sky,” a sonic exploration of the dying experience, its signature uneasy and mysterious atmosphere.
What puts the song over the top, however, is the agonized gospelesque screams performed by Clare Torry, a relatively unknown singer/EMI songwriter highly recommended by engineer Alan Parsons. This sonic stardust conjures a deathbed scene, a confessional, and, finally, a spirit rising.
Side two of the original LP opens with the rhythmic audio montage of “Money,” a song that rattles with the ringing of cash registers, ripped paper, automatic telephonic call-switching system clicks, and the jingle-jangle of coin bags.
“Money” is shaped around Waters’s funky and quirky 7/4 bass riff, and features memorable sax work by Dick Parry. “It’s a really nice solo, but it’s not an easy one,” says saxophonist Mel Collins, who toured with Waters in the mid-1980s and in 2000. “Roger even told me it was edited. It jumps from a high note to a low note. I know Roger was a stickler about the solo: He wanted me to play it note for note. Now I know why I was drinking a bottle and a half of Bacardi a day.”
“Us and Them,” a song that was originally written for (and then rejected by) Michelangelo Antonioni (for Zabriskie Point), focuses on the subjects of war, racism, and the mental armor we use to shield ourselves from empathizing with others.
Wright’s evocative hymnal and jazzy chords are at once hair-raising, calming, and utterly impersonal, underscoring the theme of the song. Complementing this mood is Gilmour’s almost unaffected vocals and Parry’s breathy sax work.
“Any Colour You Like,” the shimmering instrumental interlude between “Us and Them” and “Brain Damage,” is elevated by effervescing sonic burbles from the VCS-3 synth and Wright’s organ and Gilmour’s shivering “Badge”-like guitar effects, and dovetails nicely into “Brain Damage,” a song written partly about Barrett.
Its gospel choir, maniacal laughter, and caterwauling guitar tones (mixed in such a way as to give the listener a sense of space and sonic depth) offer the listener a hi-fi theater-of-the-mind experience.
The record closes with “Eclipse,” a written homage to everything we experience in life, warning us that all things must pass. The song and the album conclude on the heartbeat pattern heard at the record’s opening.
Waters has always maintained that the ending sends a positive message, perhaps because of the new life we sense regarding the album’s closing beating heart. But the song—and indeed the entire record—is much deeper lyrically and slams our psyches with the undeniable notion that death is final and inevitable and that we only have one chance to get it right.
CHART SUCCESS
The Dark Side of the Moon took over six months to record, and once it was finished, even the band knew there was something special about it. Simply, the record changed the band forever: It stayed on the Billboard album chart for fourteen years in America (six in the U.K.) and has sold well over forty million copies worldwide.
“It’s always baffled me,” said Gilmour in 1984. “When we made it, we knew it was the best we’d done. But we hadn’t even gone gold before then.”
Branded by the iconic cover image of white light being refracted through a prism (hinting at the kinds of hidden truths inherent in the music), The Dark Side of the Moon is perhaps the very pinnacle—and a surprisingly anomaly—of the progressive rock movement: It took the over-bloated idea of the concept record and made it palatable to everyone.
A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)
Meddle (1971)
The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
Animals (1977)
The Final Cut (1983)
A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987)
“Roger and Dave, and Rick, too, had done an incredible job of keeping the band going,” says Peter Jenner. “It’s an incredible achievement. They said to me, ‘You can’t see it without Syd, can you?’ I said, ‘No, I can’t.’ I couldn’t and I was wrong. The Dark Side of the Moon was an enormous success. I have to give them huge respect and admiration for what they did and went on to accomplish.”
WISH YOU WERE HERE
Prior to recording their Dark Side follow-up, Floyd had embarked on an experimental project—Household Objects—for which the band restrained themselves from using commercial instruments, instead deciding to tinker with found, ordinary household devices, to make rhythm, noise, and, ultimately (they’d hoped), music.
But after weeks of fruitless labor, the band abandoned the idea when Waters had another brainstorm for a new concept album based on the subject of absence.
The new album, eventually titled Wish You Were Here, was as much homage to Barrett as a reflection on the record business, the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, and the general physical and mental exhaustion the band had been experiencing the last couple of years.
For Waters that meant his sharp sarcasm, pent-up anger, bitterness, and sly wit would no longer be tempered by stoicism and timeless, lofty concepts. What comes through on Wish You Were Here is genuine emotion—whether it’s anger or sadness—on tracks like “Welcome to the Machine,” “Have a Cigar,” “Wish You Were Here” (about Barrett’s mental fire being extinguished), and the nine-part suite “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (lamenting Barrett’s
past genius and loss of mental lucidity).
There was no denying Pink Floyd’s current status: They were rock royalty and sales heroes as far as the record company was concerned. But success never sat well with Waters, and it’s interesting that the band’s emerging front man would seemingly manifest the same sorts of feelings Barrett had years earlier.
“The ‘machine’ is self perpetuating,” Waters said, “because its fuel consists of dreams.... It’s for that reason that people throw themselves into it. . .. And the dream is that when you’re successful, when you’re a star, you’ll be fine.... That’s the dream, and as everybody knows, it’s an empty one.”4
“I don’t envy someone who’s successful,” says filmmaker Anthony Stern. “Being a successful artist is really simple: You just learn to play the publicity machine. But to be a great artist, you have to turn your back on all of that.”
It’s somewhat ironic that so much of Wish You Were Here—an album that many fans cite as the band’s best (and a multimillion-unit seller in its own right)—should be dedicated to the doomed underground poet.
The lyrical undercurrent of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” Parts I through V (Parts VI through IX are instrumental and a Rick Wright tour de force), is a strange mixture of detached reportage, pep talk, sadness, and black humor, ruminating on Barrett’s mental state. (Gilmour’s bold and beautiful serpentine blues riffs, with his signature light touch of the whammy bar—not to mention the chimey yet monolithic arpeggio cutting through the thin, soupy sonic fog of Moog and glockenspiel—made the song a legendary live staple.)