"Shades of Pink," from the Source, with host Charlie Kendall
(1984)
Cast:
CK Charlie Kendall
DG David Gilmour
RWa Roger Waters
NM Nick Mason
RWr Rick Wright
CK: Prepare for the most in-depth profile the Source has ever
presented. For the next four hours, it's Pink Floyd.
DG: We're not splitting up or anything, officially or otherwise,
but we just aren't doing anything right now.
RWa: Your writing I believe comes out largely from a personality
that develops when you're a child.
RWa: I don't know what I shall do in the future, but there's no
way I can stop working.
CK: The saga of Pink Floyd is certainly one worth telling.
Consider the facts: Pink Floyd is one of rock's most
celebrated bands, yet its members are among rock's most
reluctant celebrities. From their earliest days with Syd
Barrett, right through to the present day, Pink Floyd has
defined state of the art recording, and captivating concert
production. Their album _Dark Side of the Moon_ is the most
consistent selling record in the history of the record
business. Yet how many of us could name each member? Well,
you'll get to know Pink Floyd a lot better, because Roger
Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason are
going to cover Pink Floyd from beginning to present, as the
Source presents "Shades of Pink - The Definitive Pink Floyd
Profile."
[Money]
[Run Like Hell]
CK: "Run Like Hell," and "Money," two classics from Pink Floyd.
In 1965, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason were
architecture students at the Regent Street Polytechnic school
in London. According to drummer Nick Mason, the idea to put
a band together came quite by accident.
NM: We were all students together in the first year, and there
was a guy in the year who was writing songs and he wanted to
play the songs to a publisher. So he asked various people if
they played instruments and if they might be prepared to put
a little band together to play his songs. So, Rick and Roger
and myself all "admitted" that we did play instruments in
some sort of fashion, and so we sort of put a band together.
I remember we played the songs for the publisher and he said
the songs were quite good but "forget the band." I think if
we'd listened to anyone who had any taste at the time we'd
have all folded up right then and there. But fortunately we
were so egocentric and just carried on.
CK: Originally calling themselves Sigma-6, the T-Set, the
Meggadeaths, and the Abdabs, Waters, Wright and Mason
eventually recruited guitarists Bob Close and Syd Barrett.
Waters and Barrett were old friends from High School in
Cambridge.
RWr: While we were at the Poly we had various people in and out of
the band and one particular, very good guitar player Bob
Close. He was really a far better musician than any of the
rest of us. But I think he had some exam problems and really
felt that he had to apply himself to work, whereas the rest
of us were not that conscientious. And so he was sort of out
of the band and we were looking for another guitar player and
we knew that Syd was coming up to London from Cambridge and
so he just, well he was just co-opted into the whole thing.
CK: This is the beginning of what Syd Barrett called "The Pink
Floyd Sound," and it is Barrett who is the acknowledged
founder of Pink Floyd. In February 1966, Pink Floyd was
booked to play at the weekly Sunday afternoon show called
"The Spontaneous Underground," at London's Marquee Club.
Here, and later at the UFO club, the Floyd built a loyal
following and became more or less the official band of
London's growing underground scene.
NM: I think we started to develop a cult following because
everyone was talking about the psychedelic revolution and
light and sound and all the rest of it. People were looking
to try and guess, as they always are, what was going going to
happen next in music. This suddenly looked like what was
going to happen next. I mean, we were incredibly awful, we
were a dreadful band, we must have sounded frightful, but we
were so different and so odd that I think--I mean odd, for
those days. Of course, now, people would look at it and
laugh. You look at the early photographs and we just look
like a sort of elderly version of the Monkees or something.
At the time, that was what was happening and no-one really
understood it, but they all thought they ought to try and
get in on it. So the record deal was in fact a really rather
good one considering we had no track record whatsoever and
couldn't play the instruments.
[Arnold Layne]
NM: I think Syd was a major talent as a songwriter and maybe
could have been as a musician, I mean, he did stop. He has
not done anything for the last ten years. And consequently,
people who don't perhaps entirely achieve all their potential
become even more legendary.
[See Emily Play]
CK: "See Emily Play," and "Arnold Layne," two Syd Barrett
compositions that were Pink Floyd's first chart successes in
1967. Even then, the essence of Pink Floyd couldn't be
captured on record. Their early concerts featured a
choreographed light show and quadraphonic sound system.
Following the release of their debut album, _The Piper at the
Gates of Dawn_, Syd Barrett's behavior became more and more
erratic. Barrett, the band's leader, the one who brought
Pink Floyd to prominence, was now in over his head.
RWa: I believe Syd was a casualty of the so-called "Psychedelic
Period" that we were meant to represent. 'Cause everybody
believed that we were taking acid before we went on stage and
all that stuff....unfortunately, one of us was, and that was
Syd. It's a simple matter, really, Syd just had a big
overdose of acid and that was it. It was very frightening,
and I couldn't believe what had happened, 'cause, I remember
we had to do a radio show, and we were waiting for him, and
he didn't turn up. And then he came the next day, and he was
a different person.
CK: In February 1968, Roger Waters asked an old friend of his
from Cambridge to join the band, since Syd Barrett's status
was up in the air. Seven weeks later, Syd was phased out
completely, and David Gilmour became Pink Floyd's guitarist.
DG: The first plan was that I would join and make it a five piece
so it would make it easier so that Syd could still be strange
but the band would still function. And then the next idea
was that Syd would stay home and do writing and be the Brian
Wilson elusive character that didn't actually perform with us
and the third plan was the he wouldn't do nothing at all.
And it quickly changed 'round, and it was just....it was
*obviously* impossible to carry on working that way so we
basically ditched Syd, stopped picking him up for gigs.
CK: With Syd out of the band out of the band completely, in order
for Pink Floyd to continue, someone else would have to write
the material. Roger Waters took the controls, with some
apprehension.
RWa: I had no idea that I would ever write anything, when I bought
my first guitar at age fifteen and decided that I was going
to be a rock star along with umpteen million other kids. I
had no idea that I would ever really write songs, and in the
early years, I didn't have to 'cause Syd was writing all the
material and it was only after he stopped writing that the
rest of us had to start trying to do it. I'd always been
told, at school anyway, that I was absolutely bloody hopeless
at everything, so I had no real confidence about any of it.
[Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun]
CK: "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," from Pink
Floyd's second album, _A Saucerful of Secrets,_ released in
June, 1968. That same month the Floyd became the first rock
band to play a free concert in London's Hyde Park.
CK: Over the years, Pink Floyd has written the music for several
movie soundtracks. Their film score debut was in 1969, when
they wrote and performed the music for a Barbet Schroder film
called "More."
RWr: His feeling about music for movies was, in those days, that
he didn't want a soundtrack to go behind the movie. All he
wanted was, literally, if the radio was switched on in the
car, for example, he wanted something to come out of the car.
Or someone goes and switches the TV on, or whatever it is.
He wanted the soundtrack to relate exactly to what was
happening in the movie, rather than a film score backing the
visuals.
CK: When Pink Floyd signed to EMI records in 1967, they were
assigned staff producer Norman "Hurricane" Smith to work with
them in the studio. Four albums later, the members of Pink
Floyd felt stifled by Smith, and beginning with the live side
of _Ummagumma_, started producing the albums themselves.
DG: We were phasing Norman out, through that period of time. He
was doing, you know--at the beginning he was very good, he
taught us a lot of things, certainly taught me a lot of
things. But he was also quite frustrating at times, he would
always want to even things out, make them more homogenous.
I can remember just little episodes of things that I wanted
to try something and he would be in our way and my way when
I was trying to do things. A certain point came when we felt
we had got all we could get from him and he was only
hindering in certain places.
CK: _Ummagumma_, Pink Floyd's fourth album, was released in late
1969, and featured two discs, one live, one studio. On the
studio album, each member indulged himself with his own
extended composition. Nick Mason for one enjoyed the
experiment, but admits that the parts weren't as strong as
the whole.
NM: I thought it was a very good and interesting little exercise,
the whole business of everyone doing a bit. But I still feel
really that that's quite a good example of the sum being
greater than the parts, that it's an interesting album, and
all sorts of ideas are contained in it, but it actually is
more satisfactory when we work as a band.
CK: Following the release of _Ummagumma_, Pink Floyd went to Rome
to write and record four songs for the film "Zabriskie
Point." Then, David Gilmour and Roger Waters returned to
London, to co-produce Syd Barrett's first solo album, _The
Madcap Laughs._ Finally, in late 1970, Pink Floyd's fifth
album was released: _Atom Heart Mother_. You may have
wondered where the title came from.
DG: The day we were trying to think of it, we had a newspaper,
sitting outside a pub in London, in our break in recording,
7 o'clock on a sunny evening in London, and there was a woman
who had had heart surgery, and had an atomic heart pacemaker
fitted on her heart, and she was a mother. It said "Atom
Heart Mother blah blah blah..." We thought "Atom Heart
Mother....title!" Simple as that.
CK: David Gilmour and Richard Wright co-produced the second Syd
Barrett album in late 1970. For most of the following year,
the Floyd toured the world, stopping occasionally to record
tracks for their next album, _Meddle._
[Fearless]
CK: Pink Floyd's sixth album, _Meddle_, marked the vocal debut of
drummer Nick Mason.
NM: Possibly the most interesting thing about "One of These Days"
is that it actually stars myself as vocalist, for the first
time on any of our records that actually got to the public.
It's a rather startling performance involving the use of a
high voice and slowed down tape.
[One of These Days]
CK: That's "One of These Days," from Pink Floyd's album,
_Meddle_. In concert, Pink Floyd strives to equal or surpass
the production elements on their records.
DG: Yes we did all sorts of strange things you know for live
concerts as well, we used to make up tapes for the audience
to come in by. We had one half-hour long tape, which we'd
play for the half an hour the audience was coming in just
before we started our show, and things like that. Just tapes
of bird noises in quad--quadraphonic sound, you know, with
birds singing, and pheasants taking off in the distance, and
swans taking off from water, a tractor driving down one side
of the room, and an airplane going over the top, and all
these things carrying on, all just from just different sound
effects records, you just stick them in and you--you create
a type of mood.
CK: Pink Floyd's next album was their second movie soundtrack for
filmmaker Barbet Schroder. Recorded in France, _Obscured by
Clouds_ is one of David Gilmour's favorite Floyd albums.
DG: I love that album. Yes, it was really fast, rapid stuff
without any great need to make a concept out of it. That was
when we'd just got the very first synthesizer ever invented,
and we were playing with it, the EMS Synthy. And all you
could do was tune it up to play a note, and then press it for
it to play the note, like you couldn't play notes with a
keyboard, not at that juncture. Or if you could, we didn't
know how to. That was the first time we ever used any form
of a synthesizer, was on _Obscured by Clouds_.
[Free Four]
CK: "Free Four," from Pink Floyd's _Obscured by Clouds_. If the
Beatle's _Sgt. Pepper_ revolutionized the concept of rock
albums in 1967, then Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_
fine tuned that concept into genuine audio art six years
later. Recorded at EMI's fabled Abbey Road studios, where
the Beatles recorded all their albums, Pink Floyd produced
the _Dark Side of the Moon_ by themselves, over a period of
nine months. When it was released in March 1973, _Dark Side_
represented a culmination of the band's studio experiments,
and Roger Waters' insights that had only been brushed upon in
their earlier recordings. The fact that _Dark Side of the
Moon_ was Pink Floyd's first album to reach number one in
America is easily eclipsed by the fact that today the album
is still on Billboard's top album charts. It is one of the
most consistent selling albums in pop music history--over 530
weeks. With the help of David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and
Richard Wright, here's Pink Floyd's _The Dark Side of the
Moon._
[Speak To Me]
[Breathe]
[On The Run...]
DG: We had originally go an "On the Run," a different thing,
which is on a live one if you've heard one of those bootlegs,
you might have heard a different version of it than is on
_Dark Side of the Moon_. We had a sort of guitar passage,
but it wasn't very good. We'd just got this new synthesizer,
a briefcase model EMS-1, and in the lid there was a little
sequencer thing. I was playing with the sequencer device
attachment, and came up with this sound, which is the basic
sound of it. Roger sort of heard it, came over and started
playing with it, too. Then he actually put in the notes that
we made...it was his sequence, that "de-di-doo-de-di-dil"-
-whatever it was. He made that little sequence up, but I had
got the actual original sound and I actually was the one
doing the controlling on the take that we used. Then we
chucked all sorts of things over the top of it afterwards.
[...On The Run]
DG: He had just recently before we did that album gone out with
a whole set of equipment and had recorded all these clocks in
a clock shop. And we were doing the song "Time," and he said
"Listen, I just did all these things, I did all these
clocks," and so we wheeled out his tape and listened to it
and said "Great! Stick it on!" And that, actually, is Alan
Parsons' idea.
[Time...]
NM: The drums used on the "Time" track are roto-toms. I think we
did some experiments with some other drums called "boo-
bans," which are very small, tuned drums, but the roto-toms
actually gave the best effect.
[...Time]
RWr: "Great Gig in the Sky?" It was just me playing in the
studio, playing some chords, and probably Dave or Roger
saying "Hmm..that sounds nice. Maybe we could use that for
this part of the album." And then, me going away and trying
to develop it. So then I wrote the music for that, and then
there was a middle bit, with Clare Torry singing, that
fantastic voice. We wanted something for that bit, and she
came in and sang on it.
[Great Gig in the Sky]
DG: We had people come in the studio and sit down. We'd made
lots of pieces of paper, lots of cards up with a question on
and we set them up with a microphone and everything and had
the tape recorder on and they had to sit there and they had
to answer the questions. That's how we got all the voices
and all the little lines that you hear on _Dark Side of the
Moon_ all over the place, that's how we got them. We just
said, you know, "What do you think of the dark side of the
moon?" and that's how we got the answer, via the Irish
doorman at Abbey Road, Jerry, he said (
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