For Pink Floyd Addicts
The first movement of “The Narrow Way” seems to have been drawn from another composition by David Gilmour, “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Minor,” which was recorded in December 1968 and broadcast on the BBC radio show Top Gear on December 15, 1968, although never released on record. This is also the piece that was to inspire the guitarist’s “Unknown Song,” unfortunately not used by Michelangelo Antonioni on the soundtrack of Zabriskie Point.
The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party Parts 1-3
Nick Mason / Part One: Entrance, 1:00 / Part Two: Entertainment, 7:06 / Part Three: Exit, 0:39
Musicians
Nick Mason: drums, percussion, marimba
Lindy Mason: flute
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: September 24, 25, October 1, 1968; January 21, 27, 28, April 2, 29, 1969 (Studio Two, Studio Three, Room Four)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineer: Peter Mew
Assistant Sound Engineers: Neil Richmond, Jeff Jarratt, Nick Webb
Genesis
In his book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, Nick Mason remembers the piece he created for Ummagumma. “To create my section, ‘The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party,’ I drew on available resources, recruiting my wife Lindy, an accomplished flute player, to add some woodwind.”5 And he adds: “For my own part, I attempted to do a variation on the obligatory drum solo—I have never been a fan of gymnastic workouts at the kit, by myself or anyone else.”5
As its title unambiguously announces, “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” is a sonic picture of the festivities held in his grounds by this high dignitary (of the Ottoman Empire, perhaps, or of some Arab land). The piece begins and ends with the gentle notes of Lindy Mason’s flute. The setting for the main part, throughout which Nick Mason plays a wide range of percussion instruments, is the party itself.
Production
“Nicky’s Tune,” alias “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party, Part One—Entrance,” first saw light of day in EMI’s Studio Three on September 24, 1968. The main musician during this particular session was not Nick Mason, but his wife Lindy. The excellent flutist would also take part in three other Pink Floyd sessions in February 1969, all of them for the soundtrack of the film More. Here she plays a pastoral-sounding flute part that is recorded on two tracks, creating the impression of two players answering and overlapping each other’s phrases. Nick Mason, the composer of this piece, clearly wanted an uncluttered, almost Zen-like atmosphere. This feeling of sublimity is shattered at 0:37 by a snare drum roll that shifts from mono to stereo at 0:53 and terminates with a single stroke of the cymbal and beat of the bass drum. This marks the end of the first act.
Studio work on the second part began on September 25. Known by the working title “Nicky’s Tune, Section 2, Entertainment,” this section was organized around four drum and percussion sequences. Two further sessions, on October 1 and January 27, would suffice for its completion.
The first of these sequences begins with timpani fed through the Binson Echorec in order to obtain an echo that immediately pans from side to side of the stereo field. A gong, a triangle (or finger cymbals?), a cowbell, a snare drum, and a heavily distorted flute with short reverb all join in.
The second sequence begins with a muffled roll on the toms and the timpani (from 1:30), their sound enveloped in heavy reverb. A tune then emerges as if out of nowhere on the ghostly sounding marimba, which is joined before long by the flute.
Around 3:10, a roll is played on the timpani alone, announcing the start of the third section, referred to in the recording notes as “Rhythm Machine.” This segment is built around tom and snare drum rolls plus a cymbal and what seems to be a sped-up wood block. Mason chose to mute each instrument for brief moments in a random way (presumably by placing patches of nonrecordable leader tape over the magnetic tape), in order to create an unexpected psychoacoustic gap.
The final sequence begins around 6:00. Here Nick Mason takes the inevitable drum solo, despite his lack of any real enthusiasm for this kind of thing. He nevertheless gives a very fine performance, ending this “Entertainment” (in actual fact the content bears little relation to this title) with a flourish…
The third and last part, “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party, Part Three—Exit” (otherwise known as “Nicky’s Scene, Section 3”), returns to the flute of the beginning. In fact it appears that the whole of “Entrance” has been copied onto a single track and supplemented by Lindy Mason with two further flute parts to create a kind of canon-like polyphony. “Norman Smith was particularly helpful on the flute arrangements,” Nick would subsequently acknowledge, although the studio manager was “less so by reprimanding me for editing my own tapes.”5 And it is in this joyful, pastoral atmosphere that the Grand Vizier’s party draws to a close.
Embryo
Roger Waters / 4:42
Musicians: David Gilmour: vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar / Rick Wright: keyboards / Roger Waters: bass, gong (?) / Nick Mason: gong (?), cymbal / Recorded: Abbey Road Studios, London: November 26, December 3, 4, 1968; April 13, 1970 (Studio Two, Studio Three) / Technical Team: Producer: Norman Smith / Sound Engineers: Peter Mew, Anthony Clarke / Assistant Sound Engineers: Neil Richmond, Nick Webb
Genesis
“Embryo” is a song whose words and music were written by Roger Waters at the end of 1968. As David Gilmour confirms, recording work, begun on November 26 in the middle of the Ummagumma sessions, was suspended at a certain point: “We all went off it for some reason. We never actually finished the recording of it […].”36 Why was “Embryo” not chosen for inclusion on an original album? This remains a mystery as the song is a real success, starting with the utter originality of its subject matter. Through the lyrics, Roger Waters expresses the sensations of an embryo as it develops into a fetus. Eventually, right at the end of the song, the baby is born: Here I go/I will see the sunshine show. Before reaching this stage, however, the bassist has already tossed out a sequence of quirkily humorous lines such as: Always need a little more room, Waiting here, seems like years, and All around, I hear strange sounds.
Although not included on Ummagumma, “Embryo” was recorded “live” on December 2, 1968, for the BBC radio show Top Gear and after that was regularly performed in concert until 1971, featuring lengthy improvisations that sometimes took Waters’s composition over the twenty-minute mark. As far as record issues are concerned, the song was chosen for inclusion on the compilation Picnic: A Breath of Fresh Air (1970) that united songs by various Harvest artists (notably “Into the Fire” by Deep Purple, “Mother Dear” by Barclay James Harvest, “The Good Mr. Square” by the Pretty Things, “Eleanor’s Cake [Which Ate Her]” by Kevin Ayers, and “Terrapin” by former Floyd member Syd Barrett) and a number of years later on Works, the 1983 Pink Floyd compilation released exclusively in the United States, and was eventually included in the box set The Early Years: 1965–1972, released in November 2016.
Production
On November 26, 1968, then, Pink Floyd entered the studio to record “I Am the Embryo,” the working title of what was to become “Embryo.” The first take was initially selected, before immediately being wiped at the second session, on December 3. The group duly rerecorded the base track, once again selecting the first take as the basis for the various voice, organ, and piano overdubs, which were completed the following day. But then the group seemed to lose interest and abandoned the song. More than a year after this final recording session, on April 13, 1970, Norman Smith was given the job of doing a stereo mix so that the song could appear on the Harvest compilation Picnic: A Breath of Fresh Air. The group was not present and would question the way its recording was marketed. “[…] EMI got Norman Smith to mix it, and they released it without our OK,”36 David Gilmour would later declare.
“Embryo” is a slow, melancholy, and gentle piece. Like so many Roger Waters compositions from this period, it h
as an orientalizing melody. This impression is reinforced by the Mellotron flute sounds in the intro, the muffled gong and cymbal (struck on the bell), and the melodic line supported by piano. On lead vocals is David Gilmour, singing in a characteristically silky voice. He can be heard doubling himself in the refrains, which bear a certain resemblance to nursery rhymes, and also playing acoustic rhythm guitar, presumably the Levin LT 18. For the instrumental part that follows immediately from the refrain (1:08), he plays electric, modifying the sound of his white Stratocaster with his wah-wah pedal in order to blend with the dreamlike atmosphere created by Rick Wright on keyboards. Wright can be heard at the same time on the Farfisa organ and the Mellotron, obtaining a steel drum sound from one of his keyboards, most probably by adding Echorec and/or chorus effects. In the coda (from 2:35), he improvises on the piano and at 3:08 is joined by the sped-up sound of crying children (made by Waters, some sources claim). While on the subject of Roger’s contribution, it would be impossible to overstate the importance of his excellent bass line, which acts as the backbone of the song. His Rickenbacker 4001, played by Waters with abundant glissandi, has a velvety sound obtained in all probability as a result of being plugged directly into the console. It is also with this instrument that “Embryo” concludes. It is a great shame that this track features on only two compilations because it deserves better!
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Rogers Waters would collaborate with Ron Geesin, the future orchestrator of “Atom Heart Mother,” on the music for a documentary named The Body. In a possible nod to his partner, the corresponding record, Music from the Body, released in 1970, includes two titles composed by Geesin: “Embryo Thought” and “Embryonic Womb-Walk.”
ZABRISKIE
POINT
ALBUM
ZABRISKIE POINT
(ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK)
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: May 29 (30 according to some sources), 1970
United States: April 11, 1970
Label: MGM Records
RECORD NUMBER: MGM-CS-8120
TRACK-LISTING Heart Beat, Pig Meat / Crumbling Land / Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up OUTTAKES Country Song / Unknown Song / Love Scene (version 6) / Love Scene (version 4)
Zabriskie Point, the Soundtrack of Disappointment!
Barely a year after More, the Floyd resumed their relationship with the motion picture industry when they agreed to contribute to the creation of the soundtrack for the new movie by the acclaimed Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. Having won the Palme d’Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival for Blow-Up, his superb movie about the splendors of Swinging London, in Zabriskie Point he was now turning his attention to the US counterculture and the student protest movement in the universities of the West Coast.
The United States According to Antonioni
The movie, which takes its name from a place in Death Valley in the Sierra Nevada (California and Nevada), opens with a student meeting. A decision is taken to occupy the university and, if necessary, engage in an armed struggle in order to protest against the Vietnam War, racism, and more generally the recently installed Nixon administration. Mark (Mark Frechette) is a sympathizer with the cause rather than an active militant, but he has acquired a pistol all the same. When the police take the university by storm, a gunfight breaks out. A black student is killed, followed by a policeman. Mark pulls his gun out at the very moment the officer falls to the ground, but he is not the one who pulled the trigger. Afraid of being accused of murder, he steals a small tourist aircraft and flees the city.
Overflying the road that leads to Death Valley, Mark spots a car. At the steering wheel is a young woman by the name of Daria (Daria Halprin), the secretary of a real estate developer. Having run out of fuel and been forced to land, Mark is given a lift by Daria. The pair set off for Death Valley and indulge in some passionate lovemaking. Before long, however, Mark comes face-to-face with harsh reality once more: while returning the plane (now repainted in psychedelic colors), he is shot dead by a policeman. Daria learns the tragic news on the radio, and her hatred of the consumer society is intensified to a new pitch…
A Painful Birth
Michelangelo Antonioni immediately thought of Pink Floyd for the soundtrack of this celebration of flower power against the magnificent backdrop of Death Valley. The filmmaker had liked the Floyd ever since he saw them play at the launch party for the underground magazine International Times in London in October 1966. Following that he had been deeply impressed by the single “Careful with That Axe, Eugene,” above all the live version on Ummagumma. At the end of 1969, after the initial contact had been made, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason jetted off to Rome. MGM had reserved rooms for them in the palatial Hotel Massimo D’Azeglio on Via Cavour, not far from the studio where they were to record. In his book, Nick Mason runs through the group’s daily timetable: “Due to the short notice of the project, and Michelangelo’s work schedule, we could only get time in the studio between midnight and nine in the morning. This meant a routine of trying to sleep during the day, cocktails from seven to nine, and dinner until eleven relying on the help of the sommelier to use up the $40 per head allowance.” He adds that they then “rolled down Via Cavour, exchanging banter with the hookers on the street corners, to the studios where we would do battle with the director and his film.”5 The atmosphere of the Italian capital may have been conducive to artistic creation, but relations between the four musicians and the director grew more and more tense as the sessions went on, mainly because of Antonioni’s desire to control everything. “[…] each piece had to be finished rather than roughed out, then redone, rejected and resubmitted,” writes Mason. “Roger would go over to Cinecittà to play him the tapes in the afternoon. Antonioni would never take the first effort, and frequently complained that the music was too strong and overpowered the visual image. One device we tried was a mood tape. We sub-mixed various versions and overdubs in such a way that he could sit at the mixer and literally add a more lyrical, romantic or despairing feel by sliding the mixer fader up or down. It still didn’t work.”5 “We could have finished the whole thing in about five days because there wasn’t too much to do,” confirms Roger Waters. “Antonioni was there and we did some great stuff. But he’d listen and go, and I remember he had this terrible twitch, he’d go, ‘Eet’s very beauteeful, but eet’s too sad,’ or ‘Eet’s too strong.’”9
With the help of Don Hall, a DJ on the underground radio station KPPC-FM in Los Angeles and a connoisseur of Appalachian music, Michelangelo Antonioni therefore decided to look to other talented songwriters to help him complete the soundtrack. In the end, the album Zabriskie Point (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) includes only three songs by Pink Floyd: “Heart Beat, Pig Meat,” “Crumbling Land,” and “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up.” In addition, it comprises recordings by Jerry Garcia (“Love Scene”), Garcia’s band the Grateful Dead (an excerpt from “Dark Star”), Kaleidoscope (“Brother Mary,” “Mickey’s Tune”), Patti Page (“Tennessee Waltz”), the Youngbloods (“Sugar Babe”), Roscoe Holcomb (“I Wish I Was a Single Girl Again”), and John Fahey (“Dance of Death”). The Floyd struggled to understand what was going on, as Nick Mason explains: “I mean, it was a huge disappointment to us, really, because, like… There were things that we might have did [sic] which we really thought were better than what eventually went on.”58 And Roger Waters raises the stakes by suggesting that Antonioni was worried that Pink Floyd might steal the show: “He was afraid of Pink Floyd becoming part of the film, rather than it staying entirely Antonioni. So we were quite upset when he used all these other things. I mean if he had used things which we found better…”9
The rerelease of the original soundtrack on CD in 1997 included a bonus disc that in addition to four versions of Jerry Garcia’s “Love Scene” improvisations also contains some of Pink Floyd’s other recordings for the project: “Country Song,” “Unknown Song,” and “Love Scene�
� versions 6 and 4. For the sake of completeness, it is also worth mentioning here that Pink Floyd recorded various other songs too during the Italian sessions, including “The Riot Scene,” which would be reborn three years later under the title “Us and Them” (The Dark Side of the Moon), “Take Off,” “On the Highway,” “Auto Scene,” “Aeroplane,” “Explosion,” “Looking at Map,” and so on.
The album Zabriskie Point was released in the United Kingdom on May 29, 1970, three months after the movie premiere in New York on February 9. (It had its UK premiere in London on March5.) Without exactly being a huge hit, the soundtrack album would enable Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason to expand their audience and, in a sense, it paved the way for the group’s first large-scale tour of the United States.
Pink Floyd All the Songs Page 23
