YouthQuake magazine: FRONT PAGE | MUSIC | FILM | AUTHORS | ACTORS | MODELS | ABOUT Pink Floyd: The epic journey of a legendary
band By Connie Haynes In the ’60s were the Beatles. Prior to their explosion
into popular music in England in 1963 and the world the year after,
there had been no successful intermingling of commercial and fine
art. No fusion of sophisticated sound and simple popular music. The
first few years the Beatles were on the scene, there were those who
just wanted something pleasant to dance to at social gatherings and
saw music only as a means to an end. However, the climate was right
in England, after almost 20 years of boredom accompanied by the best
economy in anyone’s memory, to explore many things. Art and music
were being eyed by a growing number as something more. Music was slowly
being considered an end in and of itself. The pendulum was swinging out of the world of conformity
in which it had resided for so long, and it was sweeping up everyone
in its wake. People were getting a taste of what it was like to listen
to music that inspired thought. Thoughts for instance, of why Bob
Dylan was dropped from the play list on “The Ed Sullivan Show” because
he wanted to play a song called “The John Birch Society Blues.” Even
those who were only interested in what style skirts were being worn
this week by the girls dancing on “American Bandstand” were becoming
curious about what was happening in “swinging London.” Although people
were polarized in this manner between popular and fine art appreciation,
a more profound change was occurring. The Beatles had created an awareness of music in numbers
that record companies had never dreamed possible. With that creation,
the Beatles had gained a power no other recording artists had ever
wielded. They had the power to dictate where their art would next
go. Gradual at first, and perhaps taking their cue again from Bob
Dylan, beginning as early as late 1964, with lyrics such as “I’m not
what I appear to be,” from “I’m a Loser,” then snowballing through
the next two years with “Rubber Soul,” culminating with the albums
“Revolver” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the old rule
that fine art could never become commercial and that pop couldn’t
acquire sophistication was broken. There now existed a force that, by virtue of its sheer
numbers, could not be ignored. Suddenly everyone had to follow the
different beat of the different Beatles. The new buzz phrase was “concept
music”: the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds”; the Byrds; Alice Cooper dived
in head first with theater productions; Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”;
The Moody Blues’ “Days of Future Pasted”; The Who with the rock opera
“Tommy.” Even the Fab Four themselves were exploiting the concept
angle, and John Lennon later commented to UPI, “Sgt. Pepper was a
concept album because we said it was, but actually it was never.” Popular music explored diversity. Fueled by a seemingly
inexhaustible number of followers with deep collective pockets, and
armed with much more sophisticated listening equipment for their equally
sophisticated musical tastes, pop-rock walked the high-wire apex it
had climbed to. However, a void was created when the Beatles split
up as the decade ended. A huge group of picky music listeners needed
to get their music fix from a different dealer. Enter a group that
had modest beginnings in the same studio building as the Beatles in
1967. In this environment, Pink Floyd would evolve and gradually captivate
those who had set themselves on the path in quest of art music that
stimulated the intellect and was irresistible in the quality of sound
and melody. * * * The ’60s culture was being heavily influenced by the
art schools in London, which was attaining notoriety as Paris and
Rome once had. Four
students in Cambridge, Roger Waters, Bob Close, Nicholas Mason and
Richard Wright, had been hanging around together studying art and
architecture when they befriended a talented fellow student of painting
named Syd Barrett in 1965. Syd had learned to play music with a good friend exactly
one year older than himself – David Gilmour,
with whom we will become more familiar later – at the art school he attended, after receiving
a guitar as gift from his father. The only three members who could
actually play a musical instrument, and claim they were moving in
that direction, before their late teen years were Syd Barrett, Bob
Close (who was proficient in jazz guitar) and David Gilmour, who was
playing guitar with his own group, Joker’s Wild. From the onset, their
musical interests were artistic and experimental. Early on, Bob and
Syd had differences in musical interest. Electric guitar feedback,
boxes with tape loops, diverse religious mysticism and hallucinogenic
drugs didn’t appeal to Bob Close, who soon left the group, leaving
Syd to roam free. This experiment covered band names as well, including
Sigma 6, The Architectural Abdabs and The Screaming Abdabs. They had
help from other friends who had the time and modest finances to support
finding them places to play. Because their musical abilities were
not impressive yet and they played sets of simple, old standby tunes,
it was helpful to enhance their gigs with embellished audio and lighting. They would
soon pioneer the use of live-controlled four-channel sound input and
speaker placement, giving their music a depth and dynamic quality
unknown at the time. And their support system of friends established
them as the first group to regularly use and intricately incorporate
into their show their own lighting, which would be as creative as
their sound. Their sound was about to get very experimental. However,
the Abdabs was not a serious-sounding name. Syd listened to music
and had albums of blues players, two of which were obscure records
by black blues artists from North and South Carolina named Pink Anderson
and Floyd Council. The band was breaking from conventional songs with
broad experimentation into moody sounds of controlled feedback, relying
heavily on their peripheral effects and lighting. Their performances
were not concerts but experiences, and they were “The Pink Floyd Sound.” * * * Things were now evolving more rapidly. Syd was writing
music that was reflecting musical ability and growth. The UFO Club
took on part-time management of an avant-garde artist named Yoko Ono,
attracting the new psychedelic multitude. Art clubs were the
place to indulge in drugs (LSD was not yet illegal), sex and music.
The Pink Floyd Sound, having become well known in the college circuit,
would soon become the UFO Club’s house band. This would be the springboard
for them that the Cavern Club had been for the Beatles. The Pink Floyd Sound had its equivalent to Beatles manager
Brian Epstein too – Peter Jenner and Blackhill Enterprises. However,
this was 1966 and not 1962. The bridges used in the English invasion
of America were still very much intact. The band had attracted attention
with its unusual variety of sound and light improvisation. Local entertainment
publications were predicting that, if they could infuse some fresh
material, they would “score well in the near future.” They might have already arrived at this conclusion. Syd
was doing just that, but with a level of gifted creativity not imagined
possible. Suddenly the atmospheric sounds had equally extraterrestrial
content. “Astronomy Domine” and “Interstellar Overdrive” were taking
on a very dramatic form (“Astronomy Domine” would continue on, magically
immortal, opening concerts by the Floyd even in 1994). The gates of
success were about to be unlocked; however, the single-record 45 rpm
format was still a necessary evil for record producers. January 1967
saw the release of their first vinyl, “Arnold Lane,” which was cute
but not similar to what their following knew them for. The short ditty
about a transvestite (very British) clothesline thief was banned by
the BBC in short order, but EMI felt good enough about it to give
the go on an album. “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was a chapter from “Wind
in the Willows” before it became the title of the first Pink Floyd
album. They were now off the runway and in flight. Flying high was
a beautiful thing for The Pink Floyd, but the flight was about to
get bumpy. * * * The death of Syd Barrett’s father was a precursor to
the unstable excesses he was about to be exposed to. Now people were
seeking the band out, and their schedule was about to be very hectic.
America was beckoning, and they had to follow the call. The first
publicly noticeable strain was on “American Bandstand” as Syd performed
his thousand-yard stare instead of lip-syncing “See Emily Play.” Having
their sound equipment stolen wouldn’t help. For the next few months, the band would steadily loose
altitude as Syd became more and more unpredictable. Work started on
a new album but quickly lost momentum in clouds of psychotic behavior
drifting from their songwriter/lead guitarist/lead singer. It would
have been impossible to imagine The Pink Floyd working without Syd,
but it was becoming impossible for them to work with him. Their
next album, instead of having almost all Barrett-written songs, had
almost none. Roger Waters did his best to take up the slack. Mason
(drums), Wright (keyboards) and Waters (bass) needed at least to find
another vocalist and guitarist to fill in. The Pink Floyd was about
to add a fifth member. David Gilmour, a serious guitarist with a better voice,
was well aware of the situation with The Pink Floyd. Joker’s Wild
and The Pink Floyd often opened shows for each other. The Pink Floyd
had a recording contract and another album in the works. When asked
to join The Pink Floyd near the end of 1967, David Gilmour said yes.
Peter Jenner tried to hang on to Syd for as long as he could, flatly
telling the rest of the group he didn’t think they could make it without
him. Syd’s degree of insanity has always been a topic of debate. However,
the fact was, he was making those around him crazy too. The accounts
of things he did is beyond the scope of this writing, but the point
had come where Syd was no longer being picked up to work in the studio. They finally finished their second album, “A Saucerful
of Secrets,” in summer 1968. The Pink Floyd’s writing quality and
melodies were absent, reflecting the absence of Syd, except for one
song. David Gilmour’s name would appear in the credits list of only
one song. There was also criticism that Gilmour was just copying Syd’s
style and sound. However, taking into account that it was Gilmour
who taught Syd to play guitar, the question arises of who copied who. * * * These were the days of the quest for direction in their
music, as they were now on their own professionally. The psychedelic
experimenting that had worked before was again predominant in their
writing. EMI noticed their need for extra promotion, and some of Syd’s
roommates (including Storm Thorgerson, who from then on would do almost
all of the band’s artwork under the name Hipgnosis) were called in
to do artwork for their albums. Another new person in the thick of
the mix was manager Steve O’Rourke, who replaced the faithless Peter
Jenner. The best promotional tactic, of course, was to be seen playing
regularly. Free concerts at Hyde Park, elaborate props, imaginative
lighting and a second-to-none, music-from-all-directions sound system
(this writer can testify to its amazing quality) would slowly get
them out in front of the pack. In fall 1969, amidst frequently hiring out for other
mixed-media projects not their own, the band released “Ummagumma,”
a double album, half of which is live renditions of previous songs
(“Astronomy Domine” with Syd Barrett in an earlier performance is
far superior to the studio version, as are the others on that disc)
and half of which is a set of new studio songs, with the writing credits
very democratically allocated. Still in somewhat of an identity crisis,
they were slowly deviating from the past course and heading into the
new age of late-night FM album rock without the over-commercialized
obligatory 45 single slot. Six months later, The Pink Floyd (they still used “The”
as part of their name) called in logistical support to engineer an
album that would have an entire side consisting of one song. “Atom
Heart Mother” incorporates orchestra and chorus support intermingled
with psychedelic effects and the group’s trademark rock sound. All
this came about due to their inability to finish the album before
a scheduled American tour. They brought in Ron Geesin –
former Beatles engineer Norman Smith had produced
the previous efforts –
and dumped what they had so far on him, along with instructions to
fix it up. The album with the cow on the cover (probably the coolest
part) as it would be known, was not their most impressive work, reflecting
the band’s lack of focus. To top it all off, their gear was stolen
in the United States, but recovered thanks to the FBI. In 1970 and 1971, there was still an abundance of material,
in differing media forms. “Obscured by Clouds,” their next vinyl release,
was quickly recorded and continued to strengthen their FM play. For
those interested in what kind of band Pink Floyd was in 1972 without
the lavish production, this album shows how musically tight they were.
Right on the heels of this effort came “Meddle.” A well thought-out
and more patiently constructed song that takes up the A side of the
album titled “Echoes” opened the tap of FM album play in the United
States from a trickle to a good dowsing. Still a psychedelic piece,
but very well done. This song followed a template that had originated
with Syd Barrett. This genre takes the listener on a journey, with
gradual but dramatic transitions and contrasts that mimic, quite well,
a hallucinogenic experience. The music starts in familiar settings
then, through careful planning, goes on a strange surrealistic path
to an unfamiliar abstract consciousness. After a short stay, it returns
to reality in similar manner. This album signaled that the identity
crisis they suffered was fully healed and pointed the way they would
travel, beckoning the listener to follow. As touring continued, particularly on occasions when
the artists and audience emotionally bonded, they found it helpful
during encores to try out new songs they were working on. This would
be impossible to do with time because the technology behind making
bootlegs was becoming a serious problem for record companies. Another medium the band utilized was film. “Pink Floyd
Live in Pompeii,” a feature-length movie, shows a rare glimpse of
what they were like on stage and in the studio. They perform “Echoes,”
along with a good sampling of material from previous albums and the
work-in-progress of the beginnings of their next album – an album
that would change the course of art history. * * * Insanity, stress, death and greed were not subjects that
leapt to mind as central concepts around which to build a rock ’n’
roll album. In their recently released DVD revisiting the making of
the album “Dark Side of the Moon,” Roger Waters relates, “I listened
to it not long ago and I’m sort of surprised I pulled it off.” From
start to meticulously produced finish, this true work of art showed
that the members of Pink Floyd, like the Beatles before them, were
worth more together than the sum of their parts. Each member’s contribution
complimented the others on a level of mastery the world had never
seen before and arguably hasn’t seen since. Roger Waters took on the task of writing all of the band’s
lyrics. Each title, along with lavish sound effects and voices, emotionally
typified the profound meaning conveyed in the thought-provoking words.
David Gilmour’s musicality had dramatically blossomed and matured
into bluesy, haunting atmospherics of superb melody, compelling the
listener to be engrossed with serious intellectual thoughts – and
enjoy it. Richard Wright injected chord progressions influenced by
the jazz of Miles Davis, and they fit seamlessly with the rest of
the group’s contributions. Nick Mason explored new and different sounds,
and the band delved into unique time signatures, notably on “Money,”
which became one of the most familiar Pink Floyd songs, along with
“Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” and “Comfortably Numb.” Construction was in the works for more than a year before
the album was released in March 1973. No other album would come close
to the longevity it would sustain in sales. So elegantly engineered
by another soon-to-be artist, Alan Parsons, it would have a depth
of sonic sophistication when played on the technically evolving modern
home sound systems that brought the listener into a marvelous new
world of acoustics. Stores that sold such equipment would always have
a copy on hand for demonstrations. So sensitive were these systems
that when a frequently played copy inevitability got worn out by an
unbalanced phonograph needle, it was common practice to buy another.
One surely would frown upon suffering through irritating scratches,
nauseatingly amplified, over state-of-the-art speakers and headphones.
This would, in part, keep the album on the Top 200 charts every week
for the next 14 years –
that's right, not 14 months or weeks. No other
album would ever come close to such a feat. This kind of success immediately propelled the Floyd
into mega stardom and a world of both positive and negative attributes.
The stadium was a different place to perform one’s art than the venues
the Floyd was used to. Their pervious fans had generally appreciated
their intricate mood-enhancing sound. The contrasts deliberately incorporated
in their music often necessitated the audience to quietly behave themselves
while listening, which was not unusual for their audiences to accommodate.
That part of the concert experience would be missed by the Floyd when
it was gone, and it was gone. By 1974, Pink Floyd had managed to take a break from
international touring and enjoy their respective leisure activities.
Nick Mason was from a well-off business family that liked fine cars,
and Mason began collecting classic automobiles. Richard Wright invested
in Greek island property to pursue sailing in the Mediterranean. David
Gilmour took up a different form of atmospheric expression, flying
airplanes, while Roger Waters sharpened his golf game. But the record
companies would not wait patiently for their cash cow to milk the
record market, and dragged them back to the studio. * * * With the phenomenal success of “Dark Side of the Moon,”
the Floyd were experiencing an unusual situation. The worst thing
in the world is to want something (unparalleled success) and never
be able to attain it. The second-worst thing in the world is attaining
it. What to do then? How would their next production not be measured
against “Dark Side of the Moon”? How could they top themselves? Pondering
this question went on for a while, with pressure to do something increasing
by the week. The idea bucket was, for a while, empty. Waters, somewhat out of despair, proposed they explore
another unique concept. This time they would just write exactly what
they were experiencing. The reality was that, even though their bodies
were in the studio, their minds were not. This is how their next album,
“Wish you were here,” was conceived: We wish you (the audience) were
here because we (Pink Floyd) are not. Work began to somehow put this down on a record. Mixed
in with this, they wished to convey also what it was like to deal
with the corporate players who were on their back, considering only
how they should rake in more money, and not knowing enough about them
to even be aware that they wanted to create art. The song “Welcome to the Machine” presents record company
executives as soulless beings, a theme also expressed on the album’s
cover as a suit with no one inside and a robot hand extended to shake. The lyrics throughout the album parrot all the things
they were being told by the executives, who didn’t know who they were
or even that Pink was not the name of a member of the group. To add
more delirium to the mix, the ever-unpredictable Syd Barrett showed
up in the studio, unannounced, proclaiming he wanted to do his part.
It might have been humorous if not for his physical appearance, with
time having been unloving to the point that nobody even recognized
him as he walked around in the studio for an hour or so. It emotionally
shook the band, jarring Waters to the point of tears. Before the album
was finished, that would be expressed in lyric: “You reached for the
secret too soon, and you cried for the moon. Shine on you crazy diamond.” “Wish You Were Here” was released in 1975. Everybody
compared it to “Dark Side” as being not as good (big surprise), but
it immediately zoomed to the top faster than anything they had done
before or have done since. The
general sound and feel of “Wish You Were Here” is emotionally ambiguous.
For those who were used to the intellectual nature of concept music,
it is apparent that this group’s honesty toward their listeners is
genuine. Perhaps the microscopically close attention to the technical
production that “Dark Side” received was not repeated with “Wish You
Were Here”; however, the difference is not very noticeable. It has
the Pink Floyd trademark surrealistic, haunting atmospherics, but
never ones to be easily trapped by a limiting form, there is a bit
more variation in sound structure. It has high-tech, futuristic synthesizers
and acoustic guitar. It has lead vocals from a non-group member (Roy
Harper sings “Have a Cigar”). One of the distinguishing qualities
in Pink Floyd albums is that if you have heard one, you damn sure
ain’t heard them all. Each album makes use of things learned from
having made the one before. * * * A year later, to get away from their stagnate surroundings,
they moved to a studio of their own creation. Waters rather pretentiously
came up with a concept idea based on a book he had read that characterized
all human beings into three categories: sheep, pigs and dogs. The
next album, 1977’s “Animals,” has all the earmarks of their sound,
but lacks in melody and relatable content. The band members’ collective mood, influenced by the
over-commercialization of their efforts and the madness of touring,
almost proved too much for Waters, who carried emotional baggage of
insecurity for most of his life. He began to detest, generally speaking,
the audience who, like record companies, didn’t really know them or
understand their art. This climaxed at the last date of the current
tour when an inebriated fan in the front was constantly yelling as
he staggered about for attention, calling, “Here piggy, piggy, piggy.”
Waters’ distaste swelled, and he managed to lure the obnoxious fan
nearer by making eye contact. When in proper range, Waters accumulated
a mouthful of saliva and spat on the fan’s head. After realizing how
crazy touring had made him, Waters proclaimed the only way he would
play before a live audience again would be if there was a wall between
him and the audience. Not even the greatest psychic on earth could have predicted
this would come to pass. * * * As 1978 rolled around, the four members were also working
up a bit of stress among themselves. They enjoyed their leisure more
and more apart; however, a reason to get back together arrived with
the shock that most of their earnings had been weakly managed and
had disappeared in an investment that turned out to be a scam. Their empty bank accounts became a stimulus for their
next project, and Waters got a flash of concept inspiration to do
the unheard of: to put a wall between himself and the audience while
playing a concert. If the audience didn’t previously understand his
art and who he was, he would make them understand now by sheer force.
Thus began the project that would eventually outpace “Dark Side of
the Moon” in sales. “The Wall” was to be a concept dealing with the deep
and sensitive nature of human psychology. Its focus in scope would
be more specific than the concepts of past Floyd albums, which at
times bordered on the vague and abstract. But it would be generalized
enough that, like past albums, the audience could relate their own
individual perceptions and interpret for themselves all the deeply
hidden lyrical references. In essence, the album for lyricist Waters
was autobiographical, about a fictitious rock star named Pink. From
birth to operatic end, the album would chronicle his experiences and
how he built an emotional wall between himself and the world, brick
by musical brick, in reaction to all the pains of life. The choice of words is sheer mastery. As a Pink Floyd
production, it was to be very ambitious, encompassing major multimedia
approaches simultaneously. There, of course, would be an album on
vinyl. There would be an elaborate and highly unusual concert tour
with special effects that would dwarf all rock operas to date. During
the live show an actual (cardboard) wall would be built, brick by
roadie-lain brick, between the band and its audience until a little
over halfway through the show, when they would be completely hidden
from audience view. This staging flows parallel to the musical sequence
of the album, which goes through the character’s life – events such as birth into a world war that in real life had taken Waters’
father before he ever met him. “If you should go skating on the thin
ice of modern life From there, an overprotective “Mother” gives instruction
on emotional brick-laying, ending in the retort “Mother, did it need
to be so high?” Then the punishing educational institutions many of us
run the gauntlet through: “When
we grew up and went to school, there were certain teachers who would
hurt the children any way they could.” “We don’t need no education.” With an abundance of songs in the editing room, the Floyd
cut the material down to a double album. In 1979, Roger Waters wasn’t
known for his pleasing persona in working with other people, and Richard
Wright wasn’t thick-skinned enough to take the abuse, preferring to
remain as much as possible on his Greek island, leading the other
members to fire him. However, when concert dates came around, he was
brought back on stage as a tour musician. Nick Mason preoccupied himself
with other things as well, but was kept around as a deciding vote
just in case. David Gilmour was now contributing, except in lyrics,
in a large way to the general musical dynamics of the project, and
had his hands quite full performing and directing the show. The most
memorable songs on the almost two hours of nonstop music would bare
his input. The musical arrangements of “Young Lust,” “Comfortably
Numb” (arguably fans’ favorite song of the band’s career) and “Run
Like Hell” are all rich David Gilmour melodies. The album ends as brilliantly as it begins, moving from
bluesy rock to a masterfully engineered orchestra of operatic drama,
in which Pink is put on trial by the nefarious powers that be and
found guilty of … showing feelings. His sentence is “to be exposed
before your peers. Tear down the wall!” The lesson learned by the audience is that some of the
most evil deeds ever committed in history – “Waiting to
turn on the showers, to fire the ovens … for the queens and the coons
and the Reds and the Jews” – are
wrought not out of passion, but in the absence of feeling and the
growth of indifference; that we can build a wall to shield us from
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but as we cut off our
source of pain and woe, we also sever our ability to give and receive
love. The third medium of this endeavor would be a feature-length
movie, directed by Alan Parker, set to their album soundtrack. The
movie was released in 1982 and has become a cult classic. “The Wall” has only recently overtaken in sales the magnanimous
“Dark Side of the Moon.” Of the 25 best-selling albums in history,
two are by Pink Floyd. * * * As “The Wall” faded from view, it was becoming apparent
that the three Floyd members were having trouble enjoying each other’s
company. In 1983, another album was assembled from songs that were
cut from the lengthy “Wall.” This time around, however, there would
be little creative input from Nick Mason and David Gilmour. Gilmour
was not comfortable playing songs that were becoming more difficult
for him to relate to. In an interview appearing on the video production
of his next solo effort, he says, “It was starting to sound complaining,
and I would tell him (Waters) I don’t feel right about singing that
one; I’d rather you do it, thank you very much.” In an interview for
PBS about “guitar heroes” for the documentary “Rock and Roll,” Gilmour
states, “The tortures of having lots of fame and having lots of money
isn’t a subject guaranteed to get sympathy.” “The Final Cut” was almost produced as a Roger Waters
solo album, but the record company pushed Waters not to go it alone
for the sake of sales figures. However, it would be printed on the
sleeve, “Written by Roger Waters and performed by Pink Floyd.” As
on “The Wall,” Richard Wright’s name would be conspicuously missing.
Overall, it is a good album denoting how men are played with like
toy soldiers by politicians (who act like children) in wars. The concepts
of Waters’ writings now were so specific that the ability to see other
angles of perception, a trademark of previous albums and about the
only thing that never changed from album to album, was no longer present.
Waters was also developing a habit of thinking the audience wasn’t
listening to what he had to say, and quite often let the music flow
very softly, then would have drums and guitar suddenly crash in. In the mid-’80s, Gilmour and Waters released solo albums
– “About Face” and “The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking,” respectively
– but if it didn’t have the moniker Pink Floyd on it, it didn’t take
off commercially. “I have worked for the past 20 years to build up the
name of Pink Floyd, and not me. Why should I throw all that away?”
Gilmour said in his solo documentary. With that thought, Gilmour and
Mason decided to carry on Pink Floyd without Waters. “You’ll never fucking do it,” Waters told them. A legal battle over the name Pink Floyd ensued, ending
with Gilmour and Mason attaining the right to keep the band name. * * * The first Waters-less Pink Floyd album, “A Momentary
Lapse of Reason,” was released in 1987, with a tour of mega proportions
immediately following. The stage – the band’s most elaborate yet –
cost so much that Pink Floyd would have to gross $30 million to break
even. Richard Wright agreed to stop partying in the Mediterranean
long enough to work on the album and tour. However, he would not be
made a full partner until he had won back his respect, which he soon
did, but as a session player at the start of the tour, he was the
only founding member guaranteed to make any money, should they fail. “Momentary Lapse” was well performed and recorded but
was weak on writing. The concert and subsequent live album, “The Delicate
Sound of Thunder,” would justify it, grossing record sales and putting
them on the top of the list of moneymakers that year in the entire
entertainment business. The mostly sold-out tour would go around the
world three times in two years, highlighting the peak of Gilmour’s
musical ability. Roger Waters would go on to produce other solo efforts
– 1988’s “Radio KAOS” and 1992’s “Amused to Death” – fuming about
Pink Floyd playing compilations of songs from previous albums. Pink
Floyd’s concerts and live album included mostly songs from the recent
release in the first half and past hits in the second, ending with
“Comfortably Numb” and “Run Like Hell” as an encore. This effort would repeat itself in the mid-’90s, with
Richard Wright officially a part of Pink Floyd again. The album “The
Division Bell,” featuring a stylish cover, would find them touring
with three elaborate stages to facilitate traveling. Once again, the band released a two-disc live album documenting
their most recent tour. 1995’s “PULSE” features, along with a sampling
of Floyd songs, a live rendition of “Dark Side of the Moon” in its
entirety, along with “Astronomy Domine,” a song Syd Barrett wrote
almost 30 years prior. There doesn’t seem to be any more Pink Floyd material
in the works. It would seem to indicate the band members’ desire not
to go out on a low note. None of them need the money. Gilmour and
Waters still write and perform in solo capacities. Occasionally, a
valid release of past efforts makes its way to the stores. “Is There
Anybody Out There?” – released in 2002 – is a live version of “The
Wall” recorded in 1980. Also recently released were “Dark Side of
the Moon” in a 5.1 multi-channel reissue and a DVD documentary about
the recording of that landmark album. Related link: Pink Floyd's official site |
| Related YouthQuake articles: |
| Roger Waters: The dark side of an enlightened mind |
| David Gilmour: The man and his music as a solo artist |