“Love Scene (Version 4)” is a long, romantic improvisation on piano by Rick Wright (although the piece is again credited to the four members of the group). The piano has a vibraphone-like sonority, inevitably calling to mind a highly elegant style of modern jazz, in particular the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Third Stream Music.
Production
Rick Wright would later explain that he preferred to compose while improvising, spending hours playing tunes and chords that would dissipate as quickly as they came. Fortunately, the tape was running for “Love Scene (Version 4).” His performance is surprising and betrays a sensitive and no doubt introverted and fragile personality. His playing is a blend of jazz and classical, revealing the influence of pianists such as Bill Evans and Duke Ellington, but also Debussy and Satie—all in moderation, however, as Wright forges his own, highly personal style here. While his technique may not have been on the same level as that of the great performers—as he himself would regret—it was sufficiently expressive to enable him to skillfully convey all his emotions. And that is the mark of a real musician.
Love Scene (version 6)
Roger Waters / David Gilmour / Nick Mason / Rick Wright / 7:12
Musicians: David Gilmour: electric lead guitar / Rick Wright: piano / Roger Waters: bass / Nick Mason: drums / Recorded: International Recording Roma Studios, Rome: November 15–22, 1969 / Abbey Road Studios, London: December 17, 1969 (Studio Two) / Technical Team: Producer: Pink Floyd / Sound Engineer (EMI): Phil McDonald / Assistant Sound Engineer (EMI): Neil Richmond
Genesis
“Love Scene (Version 6)” brings about a radical change of musical atmosphere. Here the Floyd plunges headlong into an electric blues of the kind that has been played since the 1950s in the clubs and recording studios of Chicago. Also known by the compelling title “Pink Blues” and recorded as “Alan’s Blues,” this track provided David Gilmour with an opportunity to channel the brilliance of the greats, in particular West Side luminaries such as Otis Rush, Magic Sam, and Buddy Guy.
Production
Here, then, the Floyd tries another foray into the twelve-bar blues for their musical accompaniment to the love scene. Pride of place goes to Gilmour’s Fender Stratocaster with distortion from the Fuzz Face. The guitarist plays with enormous feeling, even if he does not yet display that exceptional touch that was to make him unique on albums to come. There are signs that the track was not completely finished, such as traces of a badly wiped initial guitar solo (listen at 0:33 and 0:49) and a number of wrong notes at inopportune moments (for example 1:53 and 2:40). Nevertheless, given the length of the improvisation, the group could surely be forgiven for thinking the director had sufficient material from which to choose a flawless excerpt. Gilmour shares the solos with Rick Wright, who likewise delivers some very fine phrases on the piano. As for the rhythm section, Mason and Waters do an efficient job. Originally recorded in Rome, the track was mixed at Abbey Road on December 17, 1969.
ATOM
HEART
MOTHER
ALBUM
ATOM HEART MOTHER
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: October 10 (October 2 according to some sources), 1970
Label: Harvest Records
RECORD NUMBER: SHVL 781
Number 1 (United Kingdom), number 4 (France),
number 5 (the Netherlands), number 8 (West Germany)
Atom Heart Mother (Father’s Shout–Breast Milky–Mother Fore–Funky Dung–Mind Your Throats Please–Remergence) / If / Summer’68 / Fat Old Sun / Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast OUTTAKE No One Tells Me Anything Around Here
Atom Heart Mother, Symphony for a Cow in E Minor?
When they were released in February and June 1967 respectively, the single “Strawberry Fields Forever”/“Penny Lane” and the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band seemed to announce nothing less than an aesthetic revolution. Thanks to the Beatles—and more particularly the magical Lennon–McCartney partnership, for whom creativity in the studio henceforth took precedence over the energy of live performance—composers, arrangers, singers, and instrumentalists on the rock scene were fired by new ambitions. Although for many of them the guitar remained the key element, a range of different instruments began to take on an increasingly important role in the emergence of progressive rock. These included the flute (Jethro Tull and then Genesis), the saxophone (Soft Machine, Van der Graaf Generator), and new types of keyboard including the Mellotron and the synthesizer (the Nice, King Crimson, Yes). What’s more, this broader range of instruments helped to lift barriers and promote a fusion between rock and classical music under the impetus of a new generation of virtuosi who had been to music college: Keith Emerson of the Nice, Jon Lord of Deep Purple, and Rick Wakeman of Yes to name a few. Some of these improbable encounters between rock and classical music took a disastrous turn, for example Concerto for Group and Orchestra (1970) composed by Jon Lord and conducted by Malcolm Arnold, which could have ruined Deep Purple’s career. Others were out-and-out triumphs both artistically and commercially: Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” inspired by two works of J. S. Bach (the F-major sinfonia from the cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe and Orchestral Suite no. 3 in D Major); Jethro Tull’s “Bourée” (on the album Stand Up, 1969), an adaptation of the bourrée from Bach’s Suite for Lute no. 1 in E Minor; and the album Ars Longa Vita Brevis (1968) by the Nice, which includes an adaptation of the intermezzo from Sibelius’s symphonic Karelia Suite.
The Symphonic Dimension
The members of Pink Floyd, who had voyaged through the infinite spaces of psychedelic rock in their first two studio albums and even in the soundtracks they had composed for Barbet Schroeder and Michelangelo Antonioni, would take up a new challenge in what was to be the fifth album in their official discography. The decision to endow their music with a symphonic dimension dates from the “The Man and the Journey Tour,” and more specifically from the culminating concert of June 26, 1969, billed as “The Final Lunacy,” when the four musicians were joined on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in London for their finale by the brass of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and members of the Ealing Central Amateur Choir (conducted by Norman Smith!). The experiment having been both exciting and promising from a musical point of view, and the support of the EMI management having substantially firmed up in the wake of the commercial success of Ummagumma, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason decided to explore this avenue further on their next album—or at least on one of its two sides.
Ron Geesin Makes His Entrance
It was at this time that the Scottish composer and arranger Ron Geesin came onto the scene. The paths of Pink Floyd and Ron Geesin had crossed a number of times during the second half of the sixties, the first occasion having been at the “14 Hour Technicolor Dream” at Alexandra Palace on April 29, 1967. Geesin was subsequently inducted by the tour manager Sam Cutler into the Floyd’s inner circle and became a close friend of Nick Mason and his wife Lindy as well as Roger Waters. “I was getting on well with Roger as a human, you know, we played golf together,”9 he recalls. The artistic collaboration between Geesin and Waters—two atypical musicians—was born with the recording of the highly experimental “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” on the album Ummagumma. It was to continue on Atom Heart Mother and in their creation of a soundtrack for The Body, a documentary directed and produced by Roy Battersby and narrated by Frank Finlay and Vanessa Redgrave (all three of them members of the Trotskyite Workers Revolutionary Party). The concept was to make the human body the lead character in a movie while at the same time showcasing the latest discoveries in biology and anatomy. The music was released on November 28, 1970 (almost two months after Atom Heart Mother), in the form of an album entitled Music from the Body. This album comprises a total of twenty-two titles—including eight written or co-written by Waters—in which traditional instruments (guitar, piano, and so on) are combined with sou
nds made by the human body (cries, laughter, breathing, flatulence). It is interesting to note that the other members of Pink Floyd played on the very last track on the album, “Give Birth to a Smile,” Geesin having in the meantime befriended Wright and Gilmour, although the guitarist would reveal to Geesin on the occasion of a special performance of “Atom Heart Mother” in 2008 that he had always found his Scottish humor difficult to take…
Geesin’s presence was also explained, however, by the fact that all four members of the Floyd were feeling somewhat jaded at this point in their career, as the Scotsman recounts in his excellent book The Flaming Cow (2012): “[…] it was obvious to me at that time that the group was getting close to running on empty. It had toured extensively and internationally; it was becoming famous; it was being encouraged, pushed by EMI Records and manager Steve O’Rourke, to get the next album out.”60 In short, they needed help, and the friendly Geesin was the person they turned to as the embodiment of that help. Rick Wright confirms that their inspiration had waned a little: “We did get into a lazy period. There was a point when we sat about not knowing what to do. That was before and during ‘Atom Heart Mother.’”9 Geesin may have been the group’s chosen solution, but he would pay a price that must have left a bitter taste in his mouth…
The Album
“Ron seemed an ideal choice to create the arrangements on ‘Atom Heart Mother,’” writes Nick Mason. “He understood the technicalities of composition and arranging, and his ideas were radical enough to steer us away from the increasingly fashionable but extremely ponderous rock orchestral works of the era.”5 Ron Geesin takes up the story: “It would have been around the time of finishing the music for The Body in March that Nick and Roger first asked me if I would do something with a tape they had compiled at EMI Abbey Road Studios. None of the group could read or write music in the conventional sense, but they wanted ‘something big’ that would have to be written, ‘scored’ […]”59
Pink Floyd were due to leave for their third United States tour in a few weeks’ time, on April 9. Geesin complied with their request: “They handed me this backing track, and I wrote out a score for a choir and brass players, sat in my studio, stripped to my underpants in the unbelievably hot summer of 1970.”1 The work in question would give its name to Pink Floyd’s fifth album and fill the whole of the first side. The second side comprised four tracks: “If” (Roger Waters), “Summer ’68” (Rick Wright), and “Fat Old Sun” (David Gilmour) in a pop-rock-folk mode, plus “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” a collectively composed avant-garde quasi-instrumental piece.
Atom Heart Mother went on sale in the United Kingdom and the United States on October 10, 1970 (October 2 in the UK according to some sources). There was a danger that the group’s new symphonic orientation would put off fans from the early years, those who had succumbed to the psychedelic, fairyland charms of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn or the space-rock vibe of A Saucerful of Secrets. Not true! The album took Pink Floyd to the number one spot (in the United Kingdom) for the very first time. It would also reach number 4 in France, number 5 in the Netherlands, number 8 in West Germany, and a disappointing number 55 on the United States Billboard chart (before eventually being certified gold in the US). At the time of its release, Roger Waters declared: “The album is less experimental than ‘Ummagumma,’ much nicer to listen to. I think it’s by far the best, the most human thing we’ve done.”9 Atom Heart Mother was also unanimously and wholeheartedly acclaimed by the press. For example Beat Instrumental wrote in its December 1970 issue: “With this utterly fantastic record, the Floyd have moved out into totally new ground. Basically a concept album, the A-side title track utilizes Pink Floyd, orchestral brass and mixed choir. All blend to form a totally integrated theme which is the great strength of this LP. Great, great, great and I’d love to hear it in quadriphonic.”58
In retrospect, however, the group would be less than completely satisfied with the album, and in particular with Ron Geesin’s contribution to it. In 1972, Nick Mason summarized the views of all four band members in the New Musical Express: “Well, we’d all like to do it again. We’d all like to re-record it. It wasn’t entirely successful. But it was extremely educational.”9 And in 1984, Roger Waters would express himself in far stronger terms on BBC Radio 1: “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!’”57 Indeed the feelings of the group toward Geesin—whether justified or not—ran so high that they didn’t mention him in the credits, even in the remastered editions, despite the choral director John Alldis being acknowledged with “special thanks.” Mason, who remained friends with the unfortunate Scottish composer-arranger, would justify himself by explaining that the album did not represent the direction that Pink Floyd wanted to move in at that time.
From Mrs. Constance Ladell to Lulubelle III
After the album was recorded it became urgent to find a definitive name for the new LP’s flagship track, the working titles having successively been “Untitled Epic,” “Epic,” and then “The Amazing Pudding.” On July 16 the group were gathered in the control room of the BBC’s Paris Cinema (in London) with Ron Geesin, waiting to play live for the radio show Peel Sunday Concert. Geesin pointed to the early edition of the Evening Standard and said to Waters: “You’ll find a title in there.”57 The bassist flicked through the newspaper and came across an article headlined “Atom heart mother named,” referring to a certain Mrs. Constance Ladell, the first British woman to be fitted with a nuclear-powered heart pacemaker. The journalist, Michael Jeffries, explains that the device had been implanted in the body of a fifty-six-year-old woman at the National Heart Hospital in London. The energy source that powered the pacemaker was plutonium-238 (180 milligrams) enclosed in a tiny capsule. Waters immediately saw what an original title this would make and suggested it to his bandmates, all of whom found it a brilliant idea! Finally baptized, the piece in turn gave its name to the album. Some remember it differently. Although the Evening Standard edition of July 16, 1970, has since been reproduced and verified, Gilmour and Mason recollect “[…] a story about a woman having a baby who had this thing put in her heart”9 (in the words of our esteemed guitarist!).
Once again, the sleeve is the work of Hipgnosis, and of Storm Thorgerson in particular. “… I wanted to design a non-cover, after the non-title and the non-concept album something that was not like other covers, particularly not like other rock or psychedelic covers—something that one would simply not expect,”58 he explains. Different ideas were proposed at the time, two examples being a diver in a swimming pool and a young woman in an evening dress, standing at the foot of a staircase. Pink Floyd eventually opted for the third design: a close-up of a cow in a field. According to Thorgerson, what won the four members of the group over was not “[…] the attitude of the cow herself, who seems to be saying, ‘What do you want?’, out of curiosity rather than aggression, but the whole nonsensical ‘What the fuck is an ordinary old cow doing on the front of one of the world’s most progressive psychedelic albums?’ […]”58
Was Storm Thorgerson influenced by Andy Warhol’s Cow wallpaper? Perhaps. It is known, at any rate, that the designer, having jumped in his car and driven out into the peaceful English countryside, took a picture of the first cow he came across in a field near Potters Bar in Hertfordshire. The phlegmatic quadruped was called Lulubelle III. On the reverse of the sleeve, three more cows stare back at the lens. The inside illustration consists of a black-and-white photograph: cows yet again, this time relaxing in a field after a hard day’s work… On the subject of ruminants and their connection with the album, Nick Mason would make an observation in the November 1970 issue of Rolling Stone magazine that was enigmatic to say the least: “There is a connection between the cows and the title if you want to think of the earth mother, or the heart of the earth.”9
The Recording
Studio work for the Floy
d’s fifth album began on March 2, 1970, and continued until July 21 of that year. The group once again used Abbey Road Studios (now definitively renamed following the release of the eponymous Beatles album in September 1969), requiring around thirty sessions in total. The piece “Atom Heart Mother” alone needed around twenty. The recording sessions were clustered into two main periods: the first in the month of March and the second in June and July, the group going on tour to the United States in between. Before leaving for the States, however, Roger Waters had given Ron Geesin a tape containing the bare bones of the future “Atom Heart Mother” so that the Scotsman could come up with his own arrangement.
Upon returning in June, the Floyd went back to Abbey Road to resume recording. The arranger had fulfilled his task, composing a score for twenty choral singers, who would be conducted by John Alldis, a section of ten brass instruments, and a cello part that would be played by the Icelandic virtuoso Hafliði Hallgrímsson (not credited on the LP). However, the sessions would take place in an atmosphere of antagonism emanating in particular from the brass section, various members of which adopted an openly hostile attitude toward Geesin. In the end, the song would be recorded as well as could be expected under the circumstances, becoming the first piece of rock music to occupy an entire side of an album. The other four tracks were worked on exclusively after the United States tour, and mainly in July (with the exception of “Fat Old Sun,” which the group cut in June).
Pink Floyd All the Songs Page 25
