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"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 (<fakes accent>) "There
is no dark side of the moon, really, it's all dark."
[Us and Them]
[Any Colour You Like....]
RWa: I never kind of sit down and try and think of ideas, ideas
arrive, and I'll go "Hmm...that's not a bad idea," and I may
make a note of it, somewhere. And then I'll come back to it
later, and then maybe it will develop, or maybe I'll sit down
at a piano one day and work out some chords for a melody that
comes together with a bit of an idea. All that happens
without me trying at all, I don't have to try. The difficult
bit, then, is developing those short ideas into full-length
things, that's where the craft comes in, and the graft.
'Cause then that does take a long time--well, it can do.
Sometimes the absolutely the hardest things are, you know,
you've written two verses and a bridge to a song and you've
got to write the last verse and sometimes to write that last
verse becomes an absolute nightmare.
[Brain Damage]
[Eclipse]
CK: In 1975, Pink Floyd signed with Columbia records in America,
and released _Wish You Were Here_. Expanding on the three
themes explored on _Dark Side of the Moon_, loneliness,
alienation, and madness, _Wish You Were Here_ was inspired by
a simple guitar figure David Gilmour came up with.
DG: The whole thing started out of that first guitar thing, that
"ding-ding-ding-ding." I was just in the studio rehearsal
room during one day and playing with the guitar and those
notes started coming out, just a little motif on the guitar.
I played it a few times, and I put some DDL's and other
effects on it and started playing again and it sort of pinged
out and sounded nice and I said "oh, that's really great."
Roger really got off on it, he got exactly the same from it
as I was getting from it. I don't know quite how it
happened, but those sort of things happen. That was like the
start of--gave us the start for making the whole record.
CK: Probably the most legendary Pink Floyd story occurred during
the _Wish You Were Here_ sessions. The album was
unofficially dedicated to Syd Barrett, and the song "Shine On
You Crazy Diamond" was written about him.
RWr: Roger was there, and he was sitting at the desk, and I came
in and I saw this guy sitting behind him--huge, bald, fat
guy. I thought, "He looks a bit...strange..." Anyway, so I
sat down with Roger at the desk and we worked for about ten
minutes, and this guy kept on getting up and brushing his
teeth and then sitting--doing really weird things, but
keeping quiet. And I said to Roger, "Who is he?" and Roger
said "I don't know." and I said "Well, I assumed he was a
friend of yours," and he said "No, I don't know who he is."
Anyway, it took me a long time, and then suddenly I realized
it was Syd, after maybe 45 minutes. He came in as we were
doing the vocals for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," which was
basically about Syd. He just for some incredible reason he
picked the very day that we were doing a song which was about
him. And we hadn't seen him, I don't think, for two years
before. That's what's so incredibly...weird about this guy.
And a bit disturbing, as well, I mean, particularly when you
see a guy, that you don't, you couldn't recognize him. And
then, for him to pick the very day we want to start putting
vocals on, which is a song about him. Very strange.
[Shine On You Crazy Diamond, parts 3-5]
RWr: We started doing outdoor gigs, so we had to have a roof, so
I thought "I know what we can do...why don't we build an
enormous pyramid, and we could fill it with helium, and at
the end of the show we could let it go." This was 60 foot-
-the base of this thing was 60 feet. There was a lot of
trouble getting that past the rest of the lads. Nicky was
always a great ally, Nick Mason, was always a great ally in
all of these things. He liked the idea of it, and finally we
did it, and it was unbelievable. It was at Three Rivers
stadium in Pittsburgh, and suddenly this thing went WHOOSH!
It was on a cable, you know, so that we could try and get it
back again. Then it turned upside down and the balloon that
was inside it short off into outer space and the rest of it
fell to the earth in the crowd and was ripped into a million
pieces and they all took a bit home.
[Welcome to the Machine]
DG: It's quite easy to make an audio illusion, you know, to
create one, like you know, the one of the door opening and
people being behind that door. It's a very easy thing to do.
You just have a sound of this thing, the buzzing
"mmmmmmmmmmm" of the door opening well you've got to get some
sort of humming noise and then you just fade up a fader with
talking and laughing and clinking of glasses noises. And it
sounds just like the door's opening and you can suddenly hear
all these people at the other side of it. And those things
are very very simple audio illusions that one can create.
CK: If you'd like to get in touch with the band, here's an
address to write them: Pink Floyd/43 Portland Road/London,
England/W11 4LJ.
[Have A Cigar]
RWr: Everyone never understood, really, one couldn't believe how
we reacted to the business side of it. For example, refusing
to do interviews, or being told "well, if you do an extra
week in America you're going to earn this amount of money"
and this and this and we'd say "No, we don't want to do it."
We always went in a way against the accepted business way of
doing things, right from the beginning in some ways. When we
started playing the music we were doing, I mean everyone in
the business just said--they couldn't understand it, or
believe it. They never believed we'd be successful.
[Wish You Were Here]
CK: That's "Wish You Were Here," and "Have A Cigar," both from
Pink Floyd's _Wish You Were Here._ By the way, "Have a
Cigar" features English street singer Roy Harper on vocals.
[Pigs on the Wing, Part 1]
CK: Following the success of _Wish You Were Here_, Pink Floyd
released _Animals_ in early 1977. David and Nick give
insight into some of the effects used in recording the song
"Sheep."
DG: Roger was singing a note, and he sort of dragged the note out
long, and it just suddenly struck me that we could cross-
fade it with a synthesizer note--you know, as his note comes
down you just bring up the synthesizer, and you cross-fade
them together, and turn the vibrato up on the synthesizer.
Just to make a strange effect, and it worked.
NM: I think most of the effects are backwards echoes. The drums
are put on normally, then the tape reversed, and echo put on,
so that you just--as I say, you get that slur, instead of a
decay. With something going "CCCHHHHEEEeeeessssshhhhh...,"
that's reversed, so you get the thing building up to the
actual sound, so it goes "sssshhhhheeeeeEEEEEHHHHHC!".
[Sheep]
CK: "Sheep," from Pink Floyd's _Animals_. _Animals_ signaled the
end of Rick Wright's tenure with the band, as more and more,
Roger Waters became the Floyd's dominant member.
RWr: _Animals_ was in a way, the beginning of the departure of me
from the Floyd, because _Animals_ was Roger's concept, if you
like, and I didn't actually write anything on _Animals_. So
I was just like Nick, playing the music.
CK: Three years and several tours passed before the fans would
have a new album. In 1980, Pink Floyd released _The Wall_,
an ambitious two-record set that included the bands first
number one single in America, "Another Brick In The Wall,
Part 2." Roger Waters' view of the world had grown
progressively bleak, and even David Gilmour found Roger's
demos for _The Wall_ a little too depressing.
DG: He gave us all a cassette of the whole thing, and I couldn't
listen to it. It was too depressing, and too boring in lots
of places. But I liked the basic idea. We eventually agreed
to do it, but we had to chuck out a lot of stuff, rewrite a
lot of things and put a lot of new bits in, throw a lot of
old bits out. And when we actually were making it, and Roger
was under pressure, and we had said "That wasn't good
enough," Roger actually wrote some of the best ones after
that point. When we were actually doing it, when he was
under pressure and being pushed to do things, he did some of
the best things, I think.
[In The Flesh?]
CK: That's "In The Flesh." Over the years, Floyd has developed
an approach that has satisfied them artistically and
financially.
RWa: When you start coming up with ideas for things like this, of
course the immediate reaction always is: <inhales sharply>
"It's going to cut into the profit margins...," you know,
"Oooh, I don't know if we want to do..." And there have been
some ludicrous things that I've done in the past that were,
well that Floyd did in the past, that were, that was a real
battle to get them done because they were going to slice
$150,000 off the bottom line.
[Young Lust]
RWa: Your writing, I believe, comes out largely from a personality
that develops when you're a child. And that how successful
you may become, you don't change inside. You may become
crushed by the weight of your success, and that weight may
prevent you from expressing the feelings that are still that
you will always have inside. I don't think that the way a
person feels ever really changes through their life. Do you?
[Hey You]
CK: "Young Lust" and "Hey You," both from _The Wall_. As you
know, when the Floyd took _The Wall_ on the road, their
American tour played only two cities--New York and Los
Angeles. The elaborate show featured the construction and
demolition of a wall 31 feet high and 160 feet long. Nick
Mason:
NM: The problem, really, with the show is that it wasn't a
touring show, so it had to be set up, and left, and taken
down again. There were a lot of light operators and stage
operators and wall builders. Because of the amount of stuff
that went up and down, floated across, did this, did that,
there were a lot of operators, rather than just people
putting stuff up. And, of course we had lots of semis, as I
believe you call them, because of the special lighting pods
that we used which needed, each one needs a trailer unit to
hold it. And the special stage, because of the way the stage
was actually used, there was a sort of structural bracing
piece for the building of the wall. So it was all special
equipment, I mean it was absurdly expensive. It's not
something other people will do, generally, because it's just
so expensive to put on, it's simply not feasible. But it was
great to have done it once.
CK: For David Gilmour, one of the highlights of that tour was
performing the guitar solo of "Comfortably Numb."
DG: It was a fantastic moment, I can tell, to be standing up on
there, and Roger's just finished singing his thing, and I'm
standing there, waiting. I'm in pitch darkness and no one
knows I'm there yet. And Roger's down and he finishes his
line, I start mine and the big back spots and everything go
on and the audience, they're all looking straight ahead and
down, and suddenly there's all this light up there and they
all sort of--their heads all lift up and there's this thing
up there and the sound's coming out and everything. Every
night there's this sort of "<gasp!>" from about 15,000
people. And that's quite something, let me tell you.
[Comfortably Numb]
CK: "Comfortably Numb," co-written by David Gilmour, from Pink
Floyd's _The Wall_. Following the release of _The Wall_, a
feature-length film of the album appeared, starring Bob
Geldof of the Boomtown Rats as the central character "Pink."
Of course Pink Floyd's music is featured throughout,
including "When The Tigers Broke Free," a song that wasn't
included on the album.
[When The Tigers Broke Free]
CK: "When The Tigers Broke Free," from Pink Floyd's film
soundtrack of _The Wall._ _The Wall_ would become Richard
Wright's final cut with the band--he announced his
resignation after the _Wall_ tour. _The Final Cut_ is the
most current Pink Floyd album, and according to Nick Mason,
was meant to be a sequel to _The Wall_.
NM: It was an aftermath to _The Wall_, at one time it was
actually, the _Final Cut_ was, the title meaning that it was
the final cut of _The Wall_ that it was going to contain a
lot of old _Wall_ material that hadn't made it onto the album
or that was a sort of finale to _The Wall_. So the two
albums are actually rather interconnected.
CK: Founding father Syd Barrett recorded two solo albums in 1970,
and left another unfinished and unreleased in 1974.
Guitarist David Gilmour re-united with his high school band
"Joker's Wild" for his solo debut in 1978. The lineup was
Gilmour on guitar and vocals, backed by Rick Wills of
Foreigner on bass, and Willie Wilson on drums. Gilmour's
guitar style is one of rocks most identifiable. You may have
wondered how he started, and how he approaches the
instrument.
DG: It's very hard to tell what made me first decide to play the
guitar. "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley came out when
I was ten, and that probably had something to do with it. I
was a big fan of all that stuff, I was also a fan of "lead
belly" and other guitar-y type things, from when I was about
10 onwards. I didn't actually pick one up until I was about
14 or 15. I've never had fast fingers, they're really pretty
slow compared to most, and the coordination between left and
right hand and stuff is not great. If I start trying to do
too fast then this one gets--the right one gets out of sync
with the left hand, so I have to rely on other things. I
rely on effects, fuzzboxes, anything that I can lay my hands
on. Then I just try and make nice, sort of, melodies with
it, like try to make it sing, I try to imagine that the
guitar's kind of singing, you know?
[There's No Way Out Of Here]
CK: "There's No Way Out of Here" from David Gilmour's solo album.
Here's a fact for you: David picked that up tune from a band
he produced in the mid 70's called "Unicorn." Earlier this
year, David released his second solo album, _About Face_.
DG: Doing this album I wanted to make a really good record. I
didn't want to do it very very quickly, and I wanted to get
the best musicians in the world that I could get hold of to
play with me, so I thought I'd just make a little list of all
my favourite musicians, you know, best drummer, best bass
player, best keyboard player, and I'll work through the list
to see who I can get. Jeff Peccarro was top of my drummers
list, Pino Palladino was top of my bass players list, and Ian
Quely, or the Rev, as he's known, he actually came and did
the bulk of the hammond and piano playing, and he was
terrific. Steve Winwood was top of my keyboard playing list
but he couldn't do most of the album, but I got him to do a
bit.
[Murder]
CK: "Murder," from David Gilmour's second solo album, _About
Face._ Following its release, David assembled a touring
band, and successfully toured Europe and America this past
spring and summer. Keyboardist Richard Wright's solo album
_Wet Dream_ more or less coincided with the release of David
Gilmour's first album. Now that he's officially out of Pink
Floyd, he's formed a new band, called "Zee."
RWr: I've been working with Dave Harris, who used--he was in a
band called "Fashion," and we just released a record in the
UK, an album, under the name "Zee," that's the last nine
months. What's it like? It's...you'll have to hear it.
[Confusion]
RWr: We plan, hopefully, to start writing the next album, and then
on the strength of having material from the first album and
the second album, we would go on the road. But it's very
tentative at the moment, there are no definite plans.
CK: Nick Mason's lone solo album was called "Fictitious Sports,"
and aside from producing records, his real passion is motor
racing and collecting vintage race-cars.
NM: I want to be involved in making a film, really, about my
motor racing. But the idea with that is, possibly that we'd
do a section, part of the film would be some modern racing,
and I might work with someone else and do some music for
that.
CK: Following on the heels of David Gilmour's recent album, Roger
Waters released his first solo effort _The Pros and Cons of
Hitchhiking._
RWa: Well, the idea for the album came concurrently with the idea
for _The Wall_--the basis of the idea. I wrote both pieces
at roughly the same time. And in fact, I made demo tapes of
them both, and in fact presented both demo tapes to the rest
of the Floyd, and said "Look, I'm going to do one of these as
a solo project and we'll do one as a band album, and you can
choose." So, this was the one that was left over. Um...I
mean, it's developed an awful lot since then, I think.
[The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking]
CK: That's the title track from Roger Waters' solo album, "The
Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking." The short American tour that
just concluded was definitely one of the must-see concerts of
this year. Roger's band included Eric Clapton, and a stage
show nearing Pink Floyd's proportions. Roger's next move is
up in the air.
RWa: I don't know what I shall do in the future, but there's no
way I can stop working. If I stop working for a bit I...I
find myself drifting into the room with the piano, sitting
down, starting to tinker, you know, "What if...?" I shall go
to my grave with "Well, I wonder if...." And from those "I
wonder if"s, something happens.
CK: Pink Floyd's mark on live and recorded music is indelible.
If the hallmark of a great band is to have a signature sound,
then certainly Pink Floyd meets the qualifications, because
no band sounds like Pink Floyd--they're an original, a
classic, and are legendary.
CK: We hope you've enjoyed this profile of Pink Floyd, and if you
have any comments, we'd like to hear from you. Write "The
Source/30 Rockafeller Plaza/New York, NY 10020."
Written by Steven Johnson.