Pink Floyd: Pompeii, The Wall, and Syd

For my birthday, my brother got me multiple items, including a tribute album devoted to Pink Floyd The Wall, done by various stoner rock bands, The Wall (Redux).   For the most part the bands did a fairly decent job of reminding me about this album.  The lyrics came back to me despite not having listened to the album or watched the movie in a long time.

I had an earlier blog, “Which One Is Pink?”, but over the years I’ve had occasion to rethink some of what I said and I’d like to revisit this topic. 

Pink Floyd is a band which can be divided into three phases.  Working backwards, the least substantial is the third – New Shit Without Roger - with David Gilmour (guitar & vocals), Rick Wright (keyboards) and Nick Mason (drums) continuing on without Roger Waters (bass & vocals) for three albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987), The Division Bell (1994), and The Endless River (11/14).  They have much of the musical style of the prior phase without any of the pretension or strong themes which the Waters-era material had.  Fans tend to prefer The Division Bell and often consider A Momentary Lapse of Reason to be a David Gilmour solo album which happens to have Mason and Wright contributing.  I like them both.  I wouldn’t consider them any better than Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, or Animals, but as far as I’m concerned they do beat Waters’ self-indulgent critique of the Falklands War, The Final Cut, the last Floyd album with him.  The Endless River, released in November 2014, is half-finished fragments cleaned up a bit and apparently intended as “this is it, this is what we’ve got.”  It belongs with the other two by default rather than quality. 

Before that, you have the Weird Shit and the Classic Shit.  Each is capped off with a movie.

Weird Shit:  Piper at the Gates of Dawn (8/67), A Saucerful of Secrets (6/68), More (6/69), Ummagumma (11/69), Atom Heart Mother (10/70), Meddle (11/71), and Obscured by Clouds (6/72).  Movie:  Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii.  Rather than separate out Piper as I did before, I’d say that, notwithstanding Syd Barrett’s departure almost immediately after, it still belongs together with the subsequent albums of this period.  We’re talking about psychedelic music: long and complex, material which is best enjoyed under the influence of marijuana, if not LSD or mushrooms, although by now I’ve learned to enjoy it in straight edge format.  My favorite would be the album with the cow on the cover, Atom Heart Mother, which also has the killer duo on the B-side, “Summer ‘68” (Rick Wright) and “Fat Old Sun” (David Gilmour).   Gilmour himself described this period as “weird shit”, and Mason laughed that “the record company had no idea what we were doing.” 

These songs can be seen performed by the band in Pompeii, Italy (right outside Naples and next to the famous Mount Vesuvius) along with clips of the band at Abbey Road Studios working on Dark Side of the Moon.  Starting with a VHS copy in August 1990, I got it on DVD as soon as it came out in that format and watched it several times with my Brazilian ex-GF Leila, with whom I also saw Roger Waters in concert in summer 2000.  The interviews with the band members are also fun to watch, Waters of course being the most arrogant and Gilmour smiling as he denies that the band is still “drug-oriented” (“You can trust us.”)

Classic Shit:  Dark Side of the Moon (3/73), Wish You Were Here (9/75), Animals (1/77), The Wall (11/79), and The Final Cut (3/83).  Movie:  The Wall.    This is the material you’ll hear on the radio.  Arguably much more enjoyable to listen to while high, it’s still well within the tolerance of the straight edge crowd.  Gilmour’s guitar gives it a strong bite and keeps it from drifting too far into a mellow, prog zone.  In fact, relative to the rest of their material I’d say The Wall is pretty much a classic rock album rather than a prog album.

I started watching The Wall in college, including a few movie theater appearances (don’t think I ever saw “Pompeii” in a movie theater).  Oddly, unlike Pompeii, the band itself makes no on-camera appearance, the persona of “Pink” being played by Bob Geldof.  There’s some excellent animation by Gerald Scarfe, who – by the way – ended up marrying Jane Asher, the long-time girlfriend of Paul McCartney.  The other funny thing is that lately Waters has been quite vocal in his condemnation and denunciation of Israel, leading to the obvious suspicion of latent anti-Semitism, so it makes the crossed hammers and Pink-as-Dictator sequences much more intriguing….

Gilmour on Guitar.  I recently picked up a live DVD of the Moody Blues playing Days of Future Passed in its entirety, along with more of their popular songs.  Justin Hayward plays his familiar red Gibson ES-335, but behind him is a classic Marshall stack.   Lo and behold, he has it set on crunch, and has some heavy soloing going on – not what you would expect with a prog band like them.

Likewise, it’s easy to forget that Pink Floyd has some stunning guitar soloing.  The solo in “Atom Heart Mother” and “Fat Old Sun” from Atom Heart Mother, the solos in “Time” and “Money” from Dark Side of the Moon, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, both sections, from Wish You Were Here, “Dogs” from Animals, and of course “Comfortably Numb” from The Wall.   His solos are blues-based and highly memorable.  Tune in on this: “of course Mother’s gonna help build the Wall…”

Syd Barrett.   Having pulled Piper back into the fold, I don’t want to devote an entire blog to Syd, so I’d rather do justice to him here.  Before his LSD-fueled meltdown in 1968, Syd was the creative focus of the band – long before Waters stepped up to the plate.  While the Grateful Dead were doing their Acid Tests in California, a similar scene was developing in London, with Syd’s Floyd acting as the house band for the London version of the Acid Tests.  Piper at the Gates of Dawn has two major psychedelic songs, “Astronomy Domine” and “Interstellar Overdrive” and the rest are fairly whimsical, e.g. “Lucifer Sam”, “The Gnome”, and “Bike”. 

In between his own consumption, and “friends” doing him a favor by dosing him with LSD without his knowledge or consent, Syd wound up frying his brain on LSD.  He didn’t go to rehab like Roky Erikson of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, but he did wind up in seclusion living with his mom.  By that point he was semi-comatose or repeating the same word over and over again, making live performances almost impossible.  Gilmour did help him put out his solo albums, The Madcap Laughs (1/70) and Barrett (11/70) – Opel (10/88) collects all the unreleased material as a compilation - and he made an unannounced studio visit while the band were in the studio recording Wish You Were Here (1975), including their tribute to him, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”.  Nick Mason, asked in an interview if fans ask about Waters’ absence at their Momentary Lapse of Reason shows (1987-89), replied that they get far more questions about Syd. 

Live.   I saw the Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour at RFK (6/88), followed by Paris (Bercy) (7/89).  Years later I saw Roger Waters solo tour at Nissan Pavilion (7/00) and more recently, Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets at DAR Constitution Hall (4/19).   All shows were highly enjoyable, and Syd’s picture was up on the screen for “Shine On”.   Now I have a nosebleed seat ticket, the cheapest available, for Waters’ upcoming summer tour.  I always say, if you like a band’s music, see them live, and Pink Floyd/David Gilmour/Roger Waters are no exception.   If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor while they’re still around….

Insane? Blame Rock

They say I'm crazy, but I have a good time.
I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime.
Life's been good to me so far.

Joe Walsh, “Life’s Been Good”

 After that brief madness from fever last week, I’m brought back to music and reality, including Pink Floyd and Hawkwind.  So the topic is: rock and insanity, focusing on the craziest people in popular music.  And by that I mean truly insane, not “Keith Moon drives Rolls Royce into swimming pool” or “Brian Jones dresses in SS gear”, or even “Marilyn Manson installs fake tits in his chest”, outlandish behavior by rock stars who may do things we non-rock-stars would consider …ill-advised…but who really can’t be considered insane by any legitimate analysis. 

 Syd Barrett.  Bar none, the top “acid”/”rock” casualty, but Toby Manning (writer of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd, an excellent guide on Pink Floyd) astutely points out that (A) some bizarre cult has developed around Syd, and (B) Syd’s actual musical output was rather thin.

            Syd acted as Pink Floyd’s original musical genius for most of Piper of the Gates of Dawn and two major singles, “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play” in 1966-67.  Then during a disastrous US tour, Syd started behaving erratically.  By 1968 David Gilmour was in, replacing his school chum, and Syd was reduced to “Jugband Blues”, his only tune on the second album, A Saucerful of Secrets.  Soon he was out, but resurfaced for a brief, eerie visit to the studio in 1975 when Floyd were working on “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”.  Gilmour tried to help him with his solo material, with modest success.

            Reading the Manning book, and the more I read about Syd (much of which I’d read before, from other sources, such as Mason’s book) the more it occurred to me that Syd’s madness might not be 100% sincere.  I start with his extreme eccentricity at making his solo material AFTER the others had kicked him out of Floyd, especially that “Have You Got It Yet” tune, which really seems like he was f**king with them deliberately. 

            Look at who was the #1 co-conspirator on this stuff: GILMOUR, the guy who replaced him.  I can just imagine Syd thinking, “ok, you bastards.  You hijacked and stole this band from me, the band I created, and now you want to throw me this bone of helping me on my SOLO material.  F**k off!”  A bit like a Randite character refusing to give “the sanction of the victim” (e.g. Rearden refusing to sell them the Rearden Metal and saying, “go ahead and take it, I won’t help you pretend this is a voluntary transaction”).

            So then the response (from Waters or Mason) to this is, “listen, Syd.  We tried to work with you.  But you were impossible.  Like this business of playing the song perfectly in rehearsal and blanking out ON AIR, then back to perfect on rehearsal again.  Or giving Pat Boone the silent treatment.  You know what we’re talking about.”

            Syd’s response?  “It’s MY band.  I’m the artist.  I’m entitled to be difficult, especially if you’re putting us on ‘Top of the Pops’ or ‘American Bandstand’, that inane crap for the masses of teeny boppers who can’t possibly understand what we’re all about, all they can relate to is ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘See Emily Play’.  You’re trying to make Floyd a POP band and that’s NOT what we’re all about.  I had to sabotage it because it was turning into something completely different than it was supposed to be.  I had to destroy the band to save it.  This madness was feigned all along, just an act.  I can handle the acid; that was never the problem.  The real problem was Floyd’s success on terms I don’t agree with.” 

            Well, none of the albums they made immediately after Saucerful were particularly pop-oriented or calculated to sell lots of records, they were highly experimental.  It was Dark Side which clearly blew it all up.  Maybe Syd saw that coming.  Who knows.  While I know that The Wall was based on Waters’ own experiences as a successful rock musician and as a boy growing up in post-war England without a father, it’s hard not to see Syd in the Pink character who trashes his apartment, lapses into catatonia, then emerges as a fascist demagogue (ok, that part may be pure Waters). 

            Whatever the case was, Syd retired to almost complete seclusion with his mother in Cambridge, not even seeing his fellow band members, until his death in 2006. 

 Robert Calvert.  To me Syd gets too much attention, and Bob Calvert gets too little, but then again I’m a huge Hawkwind fan and probably always will be.  Calvert was definitely over the deep end, but contributed to the ‘Wind’s 70s stage act, often dressed in pilot’s gear on stage.  Lemmy describes him in sympathetic terms in White Line Fever.  His Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters concept album – about the West German Luftwaffe’s disastrous fighter-bomber, the Starfighter – was practically a Hawkwind album, and contributed several songs to HW’s live set: “Ejection” and “The Right Stuff”.  With Hawkwind, he was on Space Ritual, Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music (produced by…David Gilmour!), Quark, Strangeness and Charm, the Hawklords album, and PXR5.

 Peter Green.  The original guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, before the Rumours era broke them loose to the big time.  Back then, FM was a blues band with no commercial pretenses.  I like “Oh Well”.  Green went nuts and fell out of the spotlight for ages, only resurfacing fairly recently with a resurrected music career.

 Roky Erikson.  The guitarist/singer of the 13^th Floor Elevators, an Austin, Texas psychedelic band from the late 60s.  He fried his brain on too much acid, was committed to an asylum, where he endured electro-shock therapy.  I’m not sure exactly how far he’s recovered, but he’s making music again.  I like to refer to 13FE as “Iggy Piper”, a punky cross between the first Floyd album and the Stooges.

 Section 8.  “Section 8” is the “Catch 22” insanity exemption for the military, famously invoked by Max Klinger (Jamie Farr) in “M*A*S*H”, cross-dressing in an unsuccessful attempt to get a discharge and sent home.  As mentioned above, Marilyn Manson’s behavior is 100% shock value.  Likewise, I don’t think Axl Rose is insane.  To me, Rose simply suffers from “adult immaturity syndrome”, i.e. he’s a petulant asshole who does whatever he feels like and deliberately cultivates a persona of jaded, difficult rock star to attract attention -  because if he showed up on time at studios and concerts and played the music as expected, or released Chinese Democracy after 4 years and not 14, he fears no one would worship him as AXL and he’d be just another musician.  Boo f**king hoo.  Slash still wears the goofy hat and perpetual sunglasses, but he’s cleaned up his act and hasn’t been consigned to oblivion.  Get a clue, Axl.

Which One Is Pink?

Pink Floyd. "Everybody likes Pink Floyd" (Ken). It took me college to get into them - in high school Rush seemed like the better band for this genre ("progressive rock") - although Rush are more of a Led Zeppelin >>> swords & sorcery >>> alternative (blah) band. (Nothing past Moving Pictures in my collection).

Three phases: SYD, psychedelic, and ROGER (leaving out the 1987- reunion). The band formed in the late 60s amidst the art colleges of London. Syd Barrett (guitar/vocals); Roger Waters (bass/vocals); Rick Wright (keyboard); and Nick Mason (drums).

SYD (Syd Barrett) is basically Piper at the Gates of Dawn (the first album) - 2/3 whimsical poetry ("Lucifer Sam", "The Gnome" and "Bike") and 1/3 heavy duty psychedelic chaos - "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive". Syd was the band’s inspiration, its creative genius and primary songwriter. They became the house band for the London Underground, a series of LSD parties modelled after the Acid Tests in California at the time (organized by Ken "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" Kesey, and for which the house band was the Grateful Dead). Unfortunately, after being such an important creative talent and muse for the band, Syd overdosed on LSD, fried his brain, and went downhill from there. The band had to replace him with David Gilmour - his own school friend - and to this day, Syd resides in self-imposed seclusion in Cambridge, out of contact not only with the general public, his fans, but also the other band members.

Next phase - psychedelic. The band collectively collaborates with no real leader, and Gilmour easily fills the void left by Barrett. Saucerful of Secrets, Atom Heart Mother, Ummagumma, Relics (with "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" and "Julia Dream"), More (soundtrack), Obscured By Clouds, and finally Meddle, with its 23 minute "Echoes". Long, drawn out epics, lots of keyboards from Wright, off into the stratosphere, but with enough winding blues guitar from Gilmour to keep it interesting and dynamic. As Mason put it, "the record company had NO IDEA what we were doing." This phase is spectacularly illustrated by "Live at Pompeii", a movie which is mandatory viewing for all true Pink Floyd fans. Not some run of the mill concert footage, but the band playing by themselves amidst the ruins of Pompeii, with Mt Vesuvius providing ample special effects. A great bonus are the interviews with Waters, Gilmour and Mason. These are not inarticulate "barbarians" like Pantera or Ozzy Osbourne. Waters' arrogance is worth the price of admission.

ROGER phase. Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall and The Final Cut. Roger Waters takes over and the band takes off commercially. Psychedelia disappears, replaced by more conventional (and much shorter) songs. Dark Side of the Moon ranked in the Guiness Book of Worlds Records as the album to remain in the top 100 for the longest time. The recent 30th anniversary quad (!!!!) version is a steal at $14 and makes an incredible masterpiece even better. "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" (their tribute to Syd) anchors Wish You Were Here, "Dogs" gives Animals its bite with fantastically cynical lyrics and razor sharp blues guitar from Gilmour, and of course there's THE WALL. Even after OD'ing on the movie in college - seeing it in the theaters whenever it showed and buying it on VHS - I still watch it from time to time (now on DVD). And finally, "Everyone thinks of Pros and Cons as Roger's first solo album, but as far as I'm concerned The Final Cut fills that role." (Gilmour). All this material is far more radio-friendly and accessible, yet for all its commercial viability, it has enough quality, talent and integrity to merit its success. Does high quality = sellout? Listen to this material and decide for yourself.

Postscript 4/8/06. I got David Gilmour's new solo album On An Island and read some very recent interviews with him about the album and about the Live8 reunion. According to Gilmour, Waters and the other two are fine with reforming the band; it's Gilmour who doesn't want to reform the band. He's happy with his current life and working on his solo material. While the mutual antipathy appears to be gone, Gilmour has found a place where he wants to be, and it's not Pink Floyd. Incidentally, the album is very good, and chances are most Floyd fans would enjoy it, but I found it a bit too much on the easy-listening side for me. Gilmour has mellowed out considerably – too much, for my liking.

Postscript 7/11/06. Syd died in Cambridge, without ever having emerged from his self-imposed seclusion for all these years.