Reinventing Pink Floyd

by Bill Kopp

  A new composition, David Gilmour’s “Fat Old Sun,” would become a key part of Pink Floyd’s live show. Along with a handful of other tunes—“Cymbaline” and “Green is the Colour” from More, and the then-unreleased “Embryo”—“Fat Old Sun” would be reimagined live onstage, transformed from its relatively conventional studio recording into an epic-length work that revealed nuances only hinted at on record. And even on the Atom Heart Mother studio version, the underrated “Fat Old Sun” reveals itself as a Gilmour showcase.

  “Fat Old Sun” is notable as well as only the second music-and-lyrics composition by the Pink Floyd guitarist after Ummagumma’s “The Narrow Way (Part 3).” Gilmour’s second composition begins as a return to the pastoral textures of many of the songs on the More soundtrack. Gilmour’s folky acoustic guitar supports his vocals and lyrics about summer thunder, newly mown grass, evening bird calls, and laughter of children. Waters, Wright, and Mason all provide understated instrumental backing. Gilmour overdubs bits of slide guitar into the arrangement, but the instrument is intentionally placed deep into the mix where it adds subtle texture. Just past the three-minute mark, Gilmour launches into an electric guitar solo over instrumental verses; the final two minutes of “Fat Old Sun” are given over completely to Gilmour on lead guitar with the rest of the band holding down a steady rhythm backing.

  The sound of a dripping tap in Nick Mason’s kitchen opens the soundscape “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast.” The work is presented as an audio document of an early morning experience of Pink Floyd roadie Alan Styles. In the piece’s first of three sections (subtitled “Rise and Shine”), Styles is heard muttering to himself about coffee, toast, and marmalade as he pads about his kitchen. Sections of his vocals are treated to echo and reverberation effects. After a minute or so of this, the band joins in with an instrumental piece built largely over a stately, upbeat piano melody by Richard Wright. David Gilmour adds a countermelody on his guitar, run through a rotating Leslie speaker. Roger Waters’s bass is subtle nearly to the point of inaudibility, and Nick Mason provides a time-keeping beat on hi-hat.

  The second section of “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” (“Sunny Side Up”) begins with more ambient sounds of Styles frying an egg; once the title character sits down to enjoy his meal, David Gilmour fades in on multitracked guitars—acoustic and electric slide—providing a melody possessed of a bucolic air. Gilmour is the only musician to play on the “Sunny Side Up” section of the track.

  The crackling sound of frying sausages leads into the third and final section, “Morning Glory.” After a brief introduction by Richard Wright on piano, the entire band plays a tune vaguely reminiscent of the main theme from Atom Heart Mother’s title track. The sound of Styles mumbling to himself about the day to come is overdubbed several times, fading into the band’s instrumental.

  As unlikely as it would seem, “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” was performed live on at least four occasions, all in December 1970, at concerts in the United Kingdom. None of these shows has been documented on an official Pink Floyd release, but the Sheffield concert of December 22 circulates unofficially among collectors. The live “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” runs more than twenty-four minutes, nearly twice the length of its studio counterpart. Reminiscent of the previous year’s “The Man and the Journey” set piece, the live reading of “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” features numerous melodies and solos that are not present on the Atom Heart Mother version; Gilmour’s guitar work makes extensive use of tape-delay effect, in a very early example of what is known today as “looping.” The non-musical parts—performed by Mason, who also cooks a bit and watches television—elicit repeated bouts of laughter from the intimate crowd—roughly 2,000 people—assembled in Sheffield’s City Hall.

  Atom Heart Mother was released on October 2, 1970, in time for the Christmas holiday buying season, and almost exactly one year after Ummagumma’s release. Reviews were mixed. Writing in Rolling Stone, Alec Dubro called Atom Heart Mother “a step headlong into the last century” and a dissipation of what he considered the band’s considerable collective talents. “If Pink Floyd is looking for some new dimensions,” he suggested, “they haven’t found them here.” Great Speckled Bird’s Steve Wise dispatched Atom Heart Mother as a “Wagnerian piece of classical schmaltz,” arguing that the good (“freaky”) parts were “ruined by . . . encapsulation in classical garbage.”

  Despite misgivings—regarding how the piece was completed, what he sees as an unfair diminution of his credit for the work, and frustration with how it was performed—Ron Geesin remains quite proud of his work on the first side of Atom Heart Mother. He views it as a moderately successful combination of Pink Floyd’s style with something more adventurous. “If you take two seemingly disparate styles and put them together, sometimes they’ll make something greater than the original two,” he says. “And I think that’s what happened with Atom Heart Mother.”

  Geesin has his own ideas as to why Pink Floyd distanced itself from Atom Heart Mother shortly after its release. “Radical though they were,” he says, “they knew where their bread was buttered. And that is to selling albums.” He says that Nick Mason explained the band’s disinterest in Atom Heart Mother to him more recently in simple terms. “He said to me, ‘it was pointing in a direction we did not subsequently want to go.’ But Nick’s a great diplomat.”

  Looking back upon Atom Heart Mother in later years, the members of Pink Floyd wouldn’t express so much as grudging admiration for the work. In 1984, Roger Waters told BBC Radio’s Richard Skinner, “If somebody said to me now, ‘Right, here’s a million pounds, go out and play “Atom Heart Mother,”’ I’d say, ‘You must be fucking joking. I’m not playing that rubbish.’”

  A quarter century after its release, David Gilmour spoke about the album with a writer for MOJO. “At the time we felt Atom Heart Mother, like Ummagumma, was a step towards something or other,” he said. “Now I think they were both just a blundering about in the dark.”

  Though for years Gilmour seemed a bit embarrassed by the track, he would take part in a 2006 live performance of Geesin’s “corrected” version, with the orchestration moved a beat. And regardless of what anyone might have thought about the shortcomings of “Atom Heart Mother,” it would sharply point the way toward another extended work from the band, one that tops many fan polls as an all-time favorite Pink Floyd song. In terms of melody, length, and structure, “Atom Heart Mother” is a clear antecedent for “Echoes,” the centerpiece of 1971’s Meddle. Mason would acknowledge as much in 1972 when he told NME’s Tony Stewart, “I don’t think we could have done Meddle without doing Atom Heart Mother.”

  By Geesin’s measure, Atom Heart Mother wasn’t a commercially focused release. However, the record charts of 1971 would suggest otherwise: shortly after its release in the UK, Atom Heart Mother reached the #1 spot on the British album charts, the first—and, until 1975, the only—Pink Floyd album to climb to the top. And in the United States, where none of the band’s first four albums had even made it onto the album charts, Atom Heart Mother reached #55, earning a Gold Record award two decades later.

  While as an album Atom Heart Mother might have been something of a mixed bag—an epic, side-long suite, a handful of short tracks and a pair of slight melodies wedded to the sounds of frying eggs—it did represent a kind of growth for Pink Floyd. From this point forward (until 1979’s The Wall), the band would produce itself in the studio. Mason credits Ron Geesin for helping the group move in that direction. “The thing that Ron taught us most about was recording techniques, and tricks done on the cheap. We learned how to get ’round the men-in-white-coats and do things at home, like editing,” he told MOJO’s Robert Sandall in 1994. “It was all very relevant to things we did later.”

  In between session dates for Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd continued to play numerous live concerts and festival dates. The band’s set began to revolve around a collection of extended songs, some from as far back as The Piper
at the Gates of Dawn, and some from the soon-to-be released album. A select few dates featured the band joined by brass and choir for “Atom Heart Mother.” And as was now Pink Floyd’s custom, one of its most notable live performances of this era—one that provided an excellent snapshot of where the band was creatively—was a July session for BBC Radio.

  Chapter 19

  BBC Three

  By the time Pink Floyd arrived at BBC Paris Cinema in London on a Thursday in July 1970, the band’s live shows had long since coalesced around the presentation of lengthy numbers. Gone was any attempt to present short, concise, hit single-type material for the band’s concert audiences. An entire show might only include three or four songs. While the group continued to play selected tunes from its earliest albums—“Astronomy Dominé” from 1967, “A Saucerful of Secrets” from 1968—the focus was on newer material.

  One approach the band would find rewarding both creatively and on a practical level was the recasting of some of its shorter pieces into epic-length constructions. That method would be put to effective use onstage, adding extended instrumental breaks and atmospheric passages to what were essentially pop tunes. And beginning in 1970, Pink Floyd’s BBC Radio appearances would closely resemble the band’s typical live sets.

  Generally operated onstage by keyboardist Richard Wright, the group’s three-dimensional Azimuth Coordinator immersed the audience within the sonic experience. Quoted in Atlanta, Georgia, underground paper Great Speckled Bird, Roger Waters explained the band’s ambitions: “We want to throw away the old format of the pop show standing on a square stage at one end of a rectangular room and running through a series of numbers. Our idea is to put the sound all around the audience with ourselves in the middle. Then the performance becomes much more theatrical.” That same story noted that the group toured with three tons of gear.

  Remarkably, BBC’s Radio 1 did not initiate full-time FM stereo broadcast until 1987. But from its inception the radio channel was allowed to use the transmitters of easy-listening Radio 2 for selected programs. The John Peel–hosted Peel Sunday Concert was one of those programs; as a result, listeners in 1970—or at least those in the UK with access to an FM receiver—could tune in and hear a high-quality stereo broadcast of a Pink Floyd performance.

  “Embryo” is a short piece originally recorded during the Ummagumma sessions in 1969; once the group had decided upon the album’s live-and-solo concept, there was no place for the track, and it was quietly abandoned. Later—and without the band’s consent—Harvest Records included “Embryo” on a 1970 sampler LP called Picnic. That recording was a demo, not intended for release in any form. Picnic quickly went out of print, and the song went largely unheard for many years until 1983, when US label Capitol—the label that had released some of Pink Floyd’s earlier material—released a compilation LP called Works, one designed to cash in on the runaway success of 1979’s The Wall (released on Columbia). Works included that short studio recording of “Embryo.”

  While few record buyers would hear the studio version of “Embryo” in 1970, the song would be a feature of many Pink Floyd concerts for most all of 1970 and 1971. But in concert, the brief tune would be expanded and extended into something well beyond its studio counterpart.

  After a warm introduction by its host, the 1970 Peel Sunday Concert featuring Pink Floyd opens with “Embryo.” While in the context of a regular concert the number could sometimes swell to twenty-five minutes, for the time-constrained BBC broadcast, the group trims the work to a relatively compact eleven minutes. With David Gilmour (and Richard Wright) singing Roger Waters’s plaintive, first-person narrative—from the point of view of an unborn child—the dreamy arrangement deftly balances soothing melodic lines and soaring, slashing lead guitar figures. A series of verses and choruses—each followed by a tidy and tightly arranged instrumental break—takes the song to the four-and-a-half-minute mark, at which point Gilmour, Mason, and Wright pull back on their instrumental attack. Roger Waters steps forward musically with an appealing bass guitar melody that runs two measures.

  Without warning, the sounds of a cooing, giggling baby enter the mix in prominent fashion. While the BBC’s stereo broadcast could not capture the three-dimensional nature of the live performance, in which—thanks to the Azimuth Coordinator—the baby would have made its entrance over the shoulders of concertgoers, even in two-channel audio the effect is remarkable.

  Richard Wright doubles Waters’s melody a few octaves higher on his organ, while Nick Mason supplies an understated beat. Gilmour provides atmospherics on his guitar. The sounds of children in a playground fade into the mix, and Gilmour introduces a stunning sonic effect. Evoking the songs vocalized by humpback whales, the screaming—yet somehow gentle—sounds emerging from his Fender Stratocaster are achieved by “improper” use of a wah-wah pedal. Gilmour had accidentally discovered that by plugging his guitar signal into the pedal’s output jack—and then connecting the input to his amplifier—and turning the pedal backward, he could manipulate the sounds of his guitar in a way that sounded both organic and unlike anything other guitarists were doing. Clearly enamored of his new discovery, the guitarist would incorporate the sounds into a number of live pieces, though the signature use of Gilmour’s whale effect would find its home on the landmark “Echoes,” from the band’s 1971 LP, Meddle.

  By 1970, the nature of Pink Floyd’s extended soundscapes had evolved considerably from the sonic maelstrom of “A Saucerful of Secrets.” Much less musically aggressive than earlier works, Pink Floyd’s extended set pieces of this era evoke a dreamlike effect, one that doubtless endeared the band to a generation of blissed-out, pot-smoking listeners. The live “Embryo” is perhaps the most successful exemplar of Pink Floyd’s refined onstage musical approach of the early 1970s. As the applause for “Embryo” subsides, Peel comments, “I was just thinking about Pink Floyd’s music . . . it always makes me feel, at least, very hopeful. It’s optimistic music. And that was no exception.”

  With his confidence as a songwriter growing, David Gilmour would be sole composer of “Fat Old Sun,” a relatively brief track from Atom Heart Mother. At the time of the BBC broadcast, the album’s release was still more than two months away, and the Peel Sunday Concert performance would be the live debut of “Fat Old Sun.” In time, the five-to-six-minute arrangement would be expanded upon as well—in a 1971 BBC performance, “Fat Old Sun” would run more than fifteen minutes—but for the Peel show, Pink Floyd largely adheres to the studio version.

  David Gilmour plays electric guitar on the BBC reading of “Fat Old Sun” rather than the acoustic instrument he would use on the Atom Heart Mother studio version; that, plus Nick Mason’s more forceful backbeat, gives the live version a heavier feel. Gilmour’s wistful lyrics—sung in a high register—are decidedly romantic.

  After three minutes of song-proper, Gilmour plays a low-register solo over an instrumental verse. With each repeating of that verse, the guitarist subtly ratchets up the intensity, eventually only to pull back, leaving space for the song to fade into silence. “Is that going to be on the next LP?” Peel asks. An off-mic band member answers in the affirmative; Peel responds, “Great.” (“Fat Old Sun” would remain in the band’s live sets into the middle of 1971, and in the twenty-first century David Gilmour would sometimes perform the tune on his concert tours.)

  Peel continues, “These next two things have already been, in fact, recorded, and you doubtless have the records already.” Pink Floyd then begins a medley of two songs, “Green is the Colour” (from 1969’s More) and “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.”

  In its studio version, “Green is the Colour” is one of Pink Floyd’s more folk-leaning numbers of the era. In concerts beginning in 1969, the song would receive an extended treatment, sometimes running more than thirteen minutes. But by 1970 the band had trimmed the song’s arrangement back to something closely resembling the studio original, and would segue directly into “Eugene.”

  As Gilmour plays the o
pening chords of “Green is the Colour,” Richard Wright adds some very subtle organ that sounds like harmonica. After singing the song’s verses, Gilmour plays a guitar solo with a scat vocal doubling the guitar’s melodic line. The rest of the band increases the musical intensity under Gilmour’s lead, and then the guitarist and Mason drop out suddenly, leaving Richard Wright’s quiet, minor-key organ and Roger Waters’s two-note bass line to introduce “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.”

  At a shade over eight minutes, the 1970 BBC Radio reading of “Eugene” isn’t remarkably different from the many other documented versions of the piece, but the Peel Sunday Concert version shows a band that’s much “tighter”—less focused on improvisation and more centered upon a pre-planned reading of the song—than on earlier versions. The loud sections are full of controlled fury, and the quiet sections have a seething undercurrent. After two years of heavy touring and recording, the post-Barrett lineup of Pink Floyd has developed a keen sense of musical interplay.

  After introducing the individual members of the band, John Peel sets up the next song, explaining that bassist Roger Waters will be performing on acoustic guitar while Rick Wright plays organ and bass simultaneously (something “well worth watching,” he tells the studio audience). A straight reading of Atom Heart Mother’s Waters spotlight “If” follows. As Waters sings his melancholy, introspective lyrics, the rest of the band provides understated support. When David Gilmour takes a guitar solo, he adopts a highly distorted, keening tone for his slide guitar, but turns his volume down significantly, giving the solo a faraway feel that seems to complement Waters’s lyrics about the “spaces between friends.”