Why Pink Floyd? Why the hell not?

I may be immersed in the wonderful world of editing one book and writing three others, but that doesn’t mean I’m not keeping in touch with the goings-on of some of my other favorite bands! Imagine my surprise when I saw an innocent link on my Facebook feed called “Why Pink Floyd?”. Because they’re one of my favorite bands (and, much to the jealousy of my fellow classic rock-minded friends, my first concert), I clicked and was taken to a confusing website. Some words stuck out at me, notably “unreleased”, “archives”, and “box set”. So I read on:

Get immersed in Pink Floyd’s back catalogue, with outtakes, rarities, and more

Revealed today are details of a huge Pink Floyd release schedule, featuring all the studio albums newly remastered including unreleased music from the archives and collectors’ box sets. With three of the major titles coming in three different editions each, there’s an edition for every level of fan, from casual enthusiast, to the biggest Floydheads! The comprehensive release schedule kicks off on September 26, 2011, and encompasses CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, an array of digital formats, viral marketing, iPhone Apps and a brand-new single-album ‘Best Of’ collection. Vinyl editions are also in the works for release in due course. We’re delighted to bring you details of the remasters, the collection boxset, the best of, and for three of the albums (so far) the three different special editions on offer – Discovery, Experience, and Immersion – and just what to expect for each album. We’ve also got those important pre-order links, so that you can secure your chosen release(s)…

Less intriguing is the single-disc compilation A Foot In The Door, with the following tracklist:

1. Hey You
2. See Emily Play
3. The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
4. Another Brick In The Wall pt2
5. Have A Cigar
6. Wish You Were Here
7. Time
8. The Great Gig In The Sky
9. Money
10. Comfortably Numb
11. High Hopes
12. Learning To Fly
13. The Fletcher Memorial Home
14. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (edit)
15. Brain Damage
16. Eclipse

As someone who has avoided repurchasing the entirety of the Beatles and Queen discography (more out of financial woes than due to grievances with the content, though that did also factor in somewhat), I can’t promise that I’ll be getting any of these (the contents are all intriguing, especially Wish You Were Here, and I can’t wait to see what’s on The Wall) unless my fortunes change drastically, but I’m sure the more I read up on these, the more excited I’ll be for them, and then I’ll start to rejustify the costs once again…

Pink Floyd: The Division Bell

Because I find it easier to write reviews of albums I’m more familiar with than not, I’m going to break my own rule – which I’ve done already anyway – of reviewing one album by each artist I have at a time and review a second Pink Floyd album. However, this album has a special place in my heart, despite its oft-maligned reception by long-time fans and critics alike: after the astounding success of A Momentary Lapse Of Reason and its supporting tour, which ran from 1987 until 1989, Pink Floyd laid (mostly) dormant for four years before David Gilmour felt the time was right to start work on another album. A lot had changed, the least of which being the musical climate: loud, digitized ’80s sounds were out, and organic was back in. Alternative rock had reached its peak, and the reluctant spokesman of the genre would blow his brains out shortly after the release of this album.

But that had no effect on Gilmour and company, who were still mired in a messy legal battle with Roger Waters, who had dug his heels into the dirt in allowing Gilmour to use the name. Assembling old stalwarts Richard Wright and Nick Mason, Gilmour insisted on writing and recording an album that sounded more like a Pink Floyd album and less like a solo project, which was effectively what Momentary Lapse had been. This meant that Wright would end up contributing more to the album, with seven of the 11 songs featuring a writing credit by him, the first instance of this since Wish You Were Here back in 1975. (Mason, meanwhile, did not write anything whatsoever.) Additionally, Wright sang lead vocals on ‘Wearing The Inside Out’, his first full vocal performance since 1973.

The album was recorded with the trio jamming together, instead of being created in the studio piece by piece, and it shows: opener ‘Cluster One’ is an atmospheric, 6-minute instrumental, rife with languid keyboards and scorching guitar punctuations, and the listener might almost think they’ve accidentally stumbled into an easy listening album. This, however, is a callback to ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, which provided a lengthy, mood-enhancing opener before hitting the listener with an iconic and mournful guitar melody; nearly 20 years later, the iconic and mournful guitar melody has been replaced with ‘What Do You Want From Me’, a downright funky song that harks back to ‘Have A Cigar’ and ‘Money’. It’s a little too close to those songs for comfort, but it’s not unsettling enough to alter one’s appreciation and enjoyment of it.

‘Poles Apart’ was written about Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, and opens with a lilting acoustic guitar melody before Gilmour turns in a particularly impassioned vocal. The “I never thought you’d lose that light in your eye” refrain is relevant to both Barrett (who burned himself out on drugs) and Waters (who burned his bridges and, as far as Gilmour was concerned, spent more time focusing on a futile battle with his former bandmates than furthering his music), and is sung with a haunted, painful tremor in his voice. The concluding guitar solo is equally as impassioned, and is one of the very few classic songs on the album that could easily stand up against Pink Floyd’s strongest material.

Instrumentals had long been a niche of Floyd’s albums, but they were mostly phased out after Dark Side Of The Moon. ‘Marooned’ is the fourth instrumental to appear on a Floyd album since 1973, and, much like its predecessor, ‘Terminal Frost’, is a powerful performance all around: it starts off slow, with sounds of waves breaking and gulls cawing over Wright’s mournful piano and Gilmour’s guitar-emulated whale song, but picks up quickly and serves as a nice instrumental break between two weighty songs. ‘A Great Day For Freedom’ has been misconstrued as a take on being freed from Waters’ clutches and being dragged down by The Wall (“On the day the wall came down…”), but is actually about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the aftermath it caused. It’s a nice enough song, but is certainly the ‘On The Turning Away’ of the album: a heavy, overly schmaltzy piano ballad, complete with an orchestra, that sounds like a lot but doesn’t amount to much.

It’s on ‘Wearing The Inside Out’ that we get another classic song, one of a few that harks back to Pink Floyd’s past while keeping an eye firmly on the future. With a slinky, somewhat New Age-y backing, the song was written from the perspective of a man returning from the brink of a crippling depression, but its origins were more grounded in history than in fiction: during recording of The Wall in 1979, Wright was ousted from the band by Waters for failing to contribute any worthwhile material (not that Waters would have necessarily allowed it anyway) and didn’t appear at all on The Final Cut, thus beginning a period of depression and inactivity that would last for several years. Although Wright performed with Gilmour and Mason on the Momentary Lapse tour, he wasn’t on the album, but the experience of performing live again rejuvenated his creative juices, hence the abundance of co-songwriting credits on The Division Bell. Wright sings the lead vocal, sounding a lot like he did in 1973, but bringing to life the desperation and hopelessness of his bleakest period.

Following the most memorable and adventurous Floyd song on the album is ‘Take It Back’, its most by-numbers and unremarkable song. With a guitar riff reminiscent less of ‘Run Like Hell’ and more like U2 (never a good sign), ‘Take It Back’ isn’t necessarily a bad song, but it’s not a good one. With a world-weary ecological slant of a vengeful Mother Nature acting as an irate lover in a relationship, threatening to take “it” back (whatever “it” could be in this context; perhaps she’ll reclaim Earth from us?), the sentiment is appreciated though the lyrics are too hamfisted to make any real impact. This leads into ‘Coming Back To Life’, which is Gilmour’s own take on battling the dark and depressing litigious days of the mid- to late 1980s. The first half of the song is atmospheric, with keyboards swashes and a mournful guitar, before Gilmour’s cherubic voice questions the absence of an unnamed force from his life during this period. The second half perks up, with Gilmour resolving that he’ll be “killing the past and coming back to life”. It’s a mantra I firmly believe in.

Where ‘Take It Back’ was energetic yet uninspired, ‘Keep Talking’ is uninspired and insipid. Written after watching a program on astrophysicist Dr. Stephen Hawking, the song addresses the frustration in a lack of communication between people – which is practically the theme of the album, as well as the album art of two faces talking to each other – but suffers from a plodding rhythm and a lethargic arrangement. This and ‘Take It Back’ are really the only two low points on the album, and it’s ‘Lost For Words’ that is one of my favorite songs; with an acoustic guitar intro reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Independence Day’, the song is a pleasant rock ballad that, while not an instant classic, serves as a refreshing palate cleanser between two of the weightier songs on the album. However, the lyrics deal with a breakdown of communication between two stubborn parties, and sounds of a boxing match toward the middle of the song hint at the long-lasting feud between Gilmour and Waters. This is reinforced with the final verse:

So I open my door to my enemies
And I ask, “Could we wipe the slate clean?”
But they tell me to please go fuck myself
You know you just can’t win…

The epic album closer, ‘High Hopes’, starts off nice and slow, with “the ringing of the division bell” echoing across a simple piano motif. The song gradually builds in intensity, with an orchestral interlude giving way to a soaring guitar solo, one of the few on the album to actually send shivers up the spine. Lyrically, Gilmour regresses to his childhood of simpler times, when “the grass was greener” and “nights of wonder with friends surrounded” made up his memories. The song snakes through various changes in its 8 minute span, and, unlike the previous album’s closer ‘Sorrow’, this time every note played is perfectly in place and meaningful, as if Gilmour knew this would be the perfect way for Pink Floyd to bow out. As the song trails off with a promising “the endless river / forever and ever”, the song winds to a close, and, after a few seconds of silence, the voice of Floyd’s manager, Steve O’Rourke, can be heard conversing on the phone with Gilmour’s stepson Charlie. Further driving home the frustration of poor communication, Charlie hangs up on O’Rourke, who mutters a curse to himself. It’s an oddly perfect way to end the recorded career of Pink Floyd.

Essential listening: Poles Apart, Marooned, A Great Day For Freedom, Wearing The Inside Out, Coming Back To Life, Lost For Words, High Hopes

Pink Floyd: The Final Cut

Today marks David Gilmour’s 63rd birthday, so I figured there would be no better way to commemorate it than by reviewing an album with which he had so little to do, he might as well have been replaced by a session musician. You may wonder why I didn’t elect to review his solo albums, or at least the final two Pink Floyd albums (A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell) which were fronted by him, or even a good Pink Floyd album. My response to you is: this is an album that I really, really like, while a lot of people really, really don’t. Because this is my blog, I’ll do whatever the hell I want, damnit!

The Final Cut is one of those albums that polarized Pink Floyd fans upon its release, and continues to polarize them to this day. Essentially a Roger Waters album in all but name, it was borne out of difficult circumstances in the band’s history: having just completed The Wall and its complementary tour / spectacle, Waters went off to supervise the filming of the related movie, by far one of the most disturbing pieces of cinema this reviewer’s then 12-year old eyes ever watched. (Just the ‘Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2′ sequence alone, whereupon school children are fed into a meat grinder, has caused me many sleepless nights over the years, though scenes in which Pink, played here by Bob “Think I’ll Save The World Once More Before That Copycat Bono Does” Geldof, uses razor blades and broken glass to encourage reluctant blood to pour from jagged skin have also made a horrifying impression on me.) The other band members, meanwhile, twiddled their thumbs and patiently watched a clock, wondering when Waters’ indulgences would be satiated so that they could get back to the business of making another rock album.

Waters, of course, wasn’t any more ready to return to the democratic circus that had so successfully run Pink Floyd up until about 1975; he had plenty left to say about the uselessness of war and the tragedy it befalls families, by gum, and Pink Floyd was the most suitable mouthpiece he could find. Effectively reduced to a trio, with keyboardist Richard Wright forced out due to increasing drug habits and decreasing interest in being productive, the band entered the studios in the summer of 1982 to work on an accompanying soundtrack to the film, with a few new songs thrown in for good measure. The working title was Spare Bricks. However, a funny thing happened on the way to the studios: Argentina invaded the Falklands Island, which made about as much sense as Argentina invading New Hampshire, and the UK was thrown into an unnecessary conflict where their young soldiers were being blown to bits. Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges famously compared the conflict to “two bald men fighting over a comb”.

As brief as the war was, it claimed nearly 1,000 soldiers’ lives, and Waters felt the same sense of confusion, anger, and helplessness he felt when drudging up memories of his father, who had been killed in World War II and influenced countless songs and albums, the most important being The Wall. Waters shifted gears, and instead set about making a protest record, albeit one of the most bleak and disturbing protest records ever committed to tape. The album was preceded by a non-album single, ‘When The Tigers Broke Free’, recorded during the sessions for the Wall soundtrack that eventually became The Final Cut; though the single was touted as being featured on the forthcoming album, it somehow eluded release until 2004, when it was placed between ‘One Of The Few’ and ‘The Hero’s Return’. Because I purchased the 1997 remaster, I will remain faithful to the original 12-track version in this review, though I should comment that ‘Tigers’ is a powerful and emotional song, with little of the epic Pink Floyd sound and an emphasis instead on extreme light and shade, both in lyrics and musical arrangement.

That is an approach that is followed through on the album: there are many valleys, very few peaks, and a verbosity that crams more words in to a four minute song than could be found on, say, the entirety of Ummagumma. (The studio side only.) (Also, that’s hyperbole, but not by much.) There’s also a great degree of sound effects: clinking chains, tuning radios, men screaming, planes roaring, a missile deploying, racing overhead, and finally exploding … it’s an aural reward for anyone willing to brave the depressing lyrics and frequently comatose musical backings.

‘The Post-War Dream’ is an indictment of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s breakdown and betrayal of her beliefs in what England had been; Waters, and many others, felt that Thatcher was using the Falklands War as a way to further her political career. Waters must have felt that something was lost with her decision: “Should we shout, should we scream / “What happened to the post-war dream?” / Oh Maggie, Maggie what did you do?” ‘Your Possible Pasts’ follows, and was an outtake from the original The Wall sessions. This practice of including subpar songs (other songs written for the sessions but discarded include ‘One Of The Few’, ‘The Hero’s Return’, and the title track) drew considerable ire from guitarist David Gilmour, who argued that if the songs weren’t good enough then, why would they be good enough now? However, ‘Your Possible Pasts’ isn’t the worst song on the album, with a scorching guitar sound and a thunderous drum attack that would be the exception rather than the rule on this album: case in point, ‘One Of The Few’, a brief 90-second acoustic guitar-dominated track, so quiet that even with headphones and the sound all the way up, it’s still difficult to hear. This approach isn’t recommended, especially considering the following track, ‘The Hero’s Return’, starts with a loud guitar/drum intro. In ‘Pasts’, the man in question was a soldier in WWII, before returning home and finding that his “career” is now non-existent; as a result, in ‘Few’, he becomes a teacher, and takes his aggressions out on the children in ‘Return’ while decrying the state of the country he so valiantly fought for. (A mundane side-note: the working title of ‘Few’ on The Wall was ‘Teach’, while the working title of ‘Return’ was ‘Teacher, Teacher’.)

In ‘The Gunner’s Dream’, the teacher is plagued by repeated memories of his time on the field and in the air, and it’s here that the album gets its first real classic. Gilmour delivers a lovely guitar sound and Nick Mason’s drums really pack a punch, but it’s Waters’ vocals that are really impressive: at one point, he practically screams “Hold on to the dream”, with the final word elongated and bleeding effortlessly into a saxophone solo from Raphael Ravenscroft. By contrast, ‘Paranoid Eyes’ is another valley, very much like ‘One Of The Few’ with a sound so subdued that you have to wonder how far away from the microphones the musicians were. Lyrically, the theme continues, with the teacher awakened by his nightmare from the previous song, as he struggles with his inner turmoil while repressing his memories through alcohol.

‘Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert’ is less of a song and more of a mood piece, rife with sound effects and barely whispered voices (“What was that?” one ponders as a missile is deployed) that can only be truly appreciated with either an excellent stereo system or a good pair of headphones. The musical construction is of a chamber quartet while Waters rattles off a series of political and world leaders – Thatcher, Reagan, Brezhnev, etc. – in one of the most alarming games of “passing the warfare buck” I’ve ever heard. This frustration bleeds into ‘The Fletcher Memorial Home’, an explicitly pointed lambaste of the aforementioned leaders, with Waters acerbically suggesting these “overgrown infants”, “incurable tyrants”, and “colonial wasters of life and limb” be placed into a specialized retirement home. Fletcher, it should be mentioned, was the middle name of Waters’ father, Eric, to whom this record was dedicated.

‘Southampton Dock’ is another one of those quiet songs, this time recounting the emotions of the soldiers first returning home from WWII, only to be sent back out to fight for the Falklands. It serves more as an introduction, or perhaps a preamble, to the title track, a touching and chilling reminder that the effects of war has on a human: the soldier-cum-teacher has now lost his mental capacity, and has difficulty sustaining relationships with loved ones and maintaining a grasp on life. This is another classic on the album, heralding the beginning of a trio of emotionally-charged songs that probably summed up Waters’ feelings better in 15 minutes than he took trying to convey in the previous 30. Gilmour delivers another scorching guitar solo, by now a rarity, as Waters heightens the poignancy on the final verse: “Thought I oughta bare my naked feelings…”. (The almost forced mention of Rolling Stone might have been that magazine’s rationale for giving the album a 5-star rating, a rating which many feel was overly generous.)

‘Not Now John’ has been criticized as being a dumb arena rock song – which it is, but it serves a purpose. Waters and Gilmour trade vocals here, the first and only time on the album that Gilmour – long known as Pink Floyd’s lead vocalist, though Waters wrote most of the lyrics – sang on the album; this time, though, Gilmour sings the aggressive, jingoistic verses (the voice of the average punter), while Waters offers a more compassionate voice of reason. (In light of Waters’ supposed megalomania that had begun creeping in as far back as 1977, this assignment is almost comical.) The alarming cries of “Fuck all that!”, perhaps the first use of profanity on a Pink Floyd record, may only further the uselessness of the track, and while the musical backing is fairly lumpen and lugubrious, it’s the final minute or so of the song that I find to be the most enjoyable. Here Waters adapts a “drunken lout” voice, seemingly to parody the average audience member who doesn’t go to a show to experience the music but instead to get piss drunk on cheap beer and shout unintelligibly at the band; he asks the way to the bar in three different languages, while a faint voice in the background becomes more and more irritated, culminating in the main voice to exasperatedly shout, “Oi, where’s the fooken bar, John?!” The name John is an ode to Lennon, who had been shot and killed just over two years prior to the album’s release; this was the first time that Waters was able to write something approaching a tribute to the fallen Beatle, though many have questioned the sentimentality of the gesture.

‘Two Suns In The Sunset’ addresses a recurring worry throughout the album, and one that was very much on the forefront of concerned citizens’ minds in the early 1980s: nuclear war. The song is chilling, albeit laid-back and, dare I say it, musically cheery. Musically speaking, this song was performed by Waters with a “guest” appearance from Gilmour on electric guitar, while Mason reluctantly relinquished his drum throne for former Roxy Music drummer Andy Newmark, reportedly because Mason couldn’t get the exact feel Waters was desiring. Lyrically, Waters paints a vivid picture in which he’s driving away from total destruction before looking in his rear view mirror to see the haunting sight of a mushroom cloud. With his remaining moments, he thinks back to the good times while remaining fairly calm, though some panic sets in as he remembers his children (fittingly, Waters’ own children shout “Daddy! Daddy!” after the line “And you’ll never hear their voices”). Ultimately, though, as his surroundings literally melt around him, he offers a fitting metaphor to humanity – and, on a more personal level, his own tenure within Pink Floyd:

Finally I understand the feelings of the few
Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend
We were all equal in the end.

It was a fitting epitaph to Waters’ time with Pink Floyd, though nobody knew at the time that it would be his last album with them. The following year, both Waters and Gilmour released their own solo albums, and Gilmour and Mason discussed plans with Waters to not only appear at Live Aid, but also to perhaps begin working on another Floyd album. Waters saw differently to his former bandmates, and told them point blank he felt Pink Floyd was creatively spent, and as far as he was concerned, they didn’t exist anymore. (It could be argued that they didn’t exist as a band as far back as 1975; indeed, the removal of Wright from keyboard duties harmed the band on this album, taking it that far away from the trademark Pink Floyd sound.) Gilmour and Mason disagreed, and set about working on their own album to be released as a Pink Floyd album. When Waters caught wind of these overtures, he sent a terse message to Gilmour: “You’ll never fucking do it.” How wrong Waters was.

Essential listening: The Post-War Dream, The Gunner’s Dream, The Fletcher Memorial Home, The Final Cut, Not Now John, Two Suns In The Sunset … though it should really be listened to as a complete piece, lesser songs and all.