Роджер Уотерс / Roger Waters

Roger Waters' opera soon

Warsaw
February 9, 2006 - 1:39PM

The world premiere of an opera composed by British musician Roger Waters, formerly of the Pink Floyd rock group, will be staged in July in the western Polish town of Poznan, officials said today.

The opera, entitled There is Hope in its English version and Ca Ira in French, will coincide with ceremonies marking a 1956 workers' revolt against Poland's communist authorities in which over 70 people died.

"The show will take place July 7 at Poznan's international trade fair site in front of 10,000 spectators," said a statement from the city's municipal authorities.

"This work is inspired by the French Revolution. The author speaks of the eternal thirst for liberty, of the fight for freedom and for ideals. In Poland, we have known many similar rebellions."

The statement added that plans were afoot to take Waters' opera to other European cities.

The work was first presented to the public in Rome last November, when the score was played but the full opera was not staged.

- AFP
http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/roger-waters-opera-soon/2006/02/09/1139379614168.html

ps на фото: Роджер прибыл на презентацию английской версии своей оперы, проходившей в Римском Аудиториуме в прошлом году.

Об этом также сообщила The Star Online

- http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/roger-waters-opera-soon/2006/02/09/1139379614168.html

.....

В то время как Chart Attack < http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2006/02/0803.cfm > и Jam! Showbiz < http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/P/Pink_Floyd/2006/02/08/1431601-ca.html > не успокоются по поводу недавнего интервью Дэвида Гилмора, касающегося нежелания гитариста реформирования группы Пинка Флойда, практически в точности повторяя новости, что были ранее опубликованы в данной теме. Также в Jam! Showbiz даётся подробная информация о новом альбоме Гилмора,включаящая в себя всех музыкантов, принявших участие в записи, и список всех песен, вошедших в диск.

A number of you will be aware of the set of six, hour-long interviews with Pink Floyd in 1976, and broadcast by London's Capital Radio at the end of 1976/start of 1977. "The Pink Floyd Story" lead up to the release of the Animals album, with the final hour premiering the album accompanied by Roger Waters' comments.

The interviews were conducted by the legendary DJ Nicky Horne, whose career at Capital started back in 1973. He recently returned to Capital Gold, where he has a regular Classic Album show. He also broadcasts a show on the digital Planet Rock station.

With the new generation of Floyd fans out there, and the upcoming David Gilmour solo shows, Nicky thought it a good time to consider a complete rebroadcast of these fascinating interviews. That's where you might be able to help!

The tapes themselves appear to have been lost when Capital Radio moved from Euston Tower to its current home in Leicester Square. They have searched high and low, but can't find them. Nicky got in contact with us to enlist your help. Do YOU have a recording of these interviews? Nicky is after all six parts complete, in as good quality as possible. Some technical wizardry will be used where necessary to clean up any problems with the sound.

If you are able to help out, please send us an email to matt@brain-damage.co.uk with full details! Thanks in advance for your help with this...

In the meantime, we have full transcriptions of all six parts of this groundbreaking, and fascinating set of interviews. Click the following links to read them all!

http://www.brain-damage.co.uk/news/0602051.html

Part 1; Capital Radio, London, 17 December 1976.
The following is one part of the legendary Capital Radio Pink Floyd Story - the history of the band, told by the band themselves in a set of interviews undertaken in 1976, and broadcast at the end of 1976/start of 1977. This transcription done by Matt Johns, Brain Damage - please seek permission from us before using elsewhere.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The programme presenter was Nicky Horne. Abbreviations used as follows:
NM: Nick Mason, RW: Roger Waters, DG: David Gilmour, SB: Syd Barrett, NH: Nicky Horne
NS: Norman Smith, PJ: Peter Jenner, JP: John Peel, CBC: CBC Radio, Canada
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NM: There was a very specific group. I mean, there was the whole business of UFO and 1967 and the London underground, which we were not...I don't think we were personally involved in it, although we were... erm... that's where we worked. I mean we weren't personally involved in all the fringe activities or all the philosophies of that period. We, I mean, it somehow, it seemed almost by chance, I mean it wasn't very, you can now see all sorts of types, but there wasn't some, er, it doesn't feel as though there was any deliberate policy going on to make us one thing or another. It just seemed to happen like that.

What am I saying? Not quite sure... just that there... all I'm trying to say is that there wasn't, er, a great premeditated exercise on our part to, er, to be something. I mean, it just seemed to come out like that. I mean, I'm not ashamed of it, or denying it, or saying we're perfectly normal people, but I just don't feel that it's right to say that we've, have been from the beginning, worked on becoming some mysterious cult band.

The occasions were terrific, UFO was a fantastic place to play. I mean the band did come out of all that in lots of ways, I mean, we've discussed before the history of the band and the fact that during that period we were working at Top Rank circuits, and they HATED it. I HATED it. We could clear halls so fast it wasn't true. I mean they were outraged by what came round on the revolving stage and they lost very little time in trying to make this clear, and the only place we played with any sort of success, or real interest, was UFO, and the various underground-in-inverted comma's clubs and occasions.

So, certainly we were a product of that in lots of ways. They tended to follow a pattern, rather along the lines of, there'd be this revolving stage ad the audience out in front who were hoping to hear "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" and a host of other hits, which we couldn't of course play. We had a repetoire of STRANGE things like "Interstellar Overdrive" to carry us through that whole set, er, and I just remember the stages going round and this audience [laughs] just APPALLED by what they saw in front of them. And, I mean, the whole thing was fantastic anyway, because no one could - what was then considered to be our audience of course - could never get into these places, because you had to have a tie to get in, and there was the whole business of they wouldn't let us drink at the bar because we hadn't got collars and ties, and various outrages that used to drive us all mad.

RW: There was never any question of, er, attempting an image or striving towards an image. There was no conscious thought about on that level in the band at all, ever. And there hasn't been since then. That may have become conscious to keep it all unconscious, if you see what I mean. But there was never any image building or any kind of, as I said before, and I'll say it again - the thing about y'know, not speaking to people just came up because we did loads and loads and loads of interviews, loads and masses of them, and y'know, how did you, why did you choose the name Pink Floyd; you either say, "Well, I'm gonna be answering this question for the rest of my life", or you say "I'm not interested in speaking to people who know nothing about us, or music, or anything else", and so we decided not to do that, but it was nothing to do with creating an image, it was purely a personal response to people mucking us about a lot; I mean, "Arnold Layne" was the start of our professional career. I stopped going into the office the day "Arnold Layne" came out, more or less.

NM: At that time we were aiming to be a hit parade band. I mean - we wanted a hit single. The idea of making an album hadn't even... well, I'm speaking personally, 'cos I can't speak for the others, but I suspect that we hadn't really considered the sort of move onto an album. We were only interested in making a single initially, and a hit single. We were interested in the business of being in rock'n'roll, and being a pop group: SUCCESSFUL - MONEY - CARS, that sort of thing. Good living. I mean, that's... erm, that's the reason most people get involved in rock music, because they want that sort of success. If you don't, you get involved in something else.

NH: And Norman Smith, the Floyd's early producer, remembers "Arnold Layne".

NS: I wasn't too keen actually on "Arnold Layne". Joe Boyd actually did that. I wasn't too keen on that particular version. I was proven wrong, of course, because eventually that was the one that went out, but I thought we could better it. In fact, I told the boys I'd like to have another go anyway and in fact we set up this recording to do just that along with other titles of course; it was an all-night session, if I remember rightly. And that was going to be the first song but when they arrived I could see that they weren't too keen in fact to attempt a remake of "Arnold Layne" so in fact we never did start it, we never did have a go at that. So, the original one went out.

NH: And how did Norman Smith feel at the prospect of recording the Pink Floyd?

NS: [Laughs] I was terrified! Er...apprehensive I suppose you'd call it. I was sort of, erm, a bit of a mutual thing really. I didn't really know what to expect from them as personalities, and I guess the same went for them. And I was nervous, there was no doubt about that. I was very nervous about meeting these guys because they had made a bit of a name for themselves without, strangely enough, having a hit record, and they were obviously something quite a lot different even though I'd been used to the Beatles and people...I was gonna say people like that of course they were another one-off there, but then obviously had that something which to me was a kind of an untouchable thing - I couldn't describe it at all: my feelings, except that I was very nervous and apprehensive of what to expect from them as individuals. Really I was looking for a group or something for...which I could make my name as a producer so it was right at the beginning of my own career as a producer and I had this tip-off phone call from their... friend of mine who was in management/agency, telling me about Floyd and I went along to see them. That's when they had the light show and all that bit - and as I said, very impressed with the charisma of them and they had to be something, but nevertheless I was very nervous about getting them into a studio. So they were... I had to get them to EMI, to sign them in some way, because I thought that, I recognised that here was going to be something. But of course, at the same time, the difficulty of recording this group, producing this group was obviously there for me and I though, well, let's give it a whirl, let's see how we get on.

NH: One of the first interviews the Pink Floyd gave was in Canada, on CBC. There are precious few recordings of Syd Barrett talking about those early days, and this is one of the few. Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, and Nick Mason, on CBC...

CBC: In a frenetic haze of sound and sight, a new concept of music has begun to penetrate the senses of Britain's already hopped-up beat fans. Some call it free sound, others prefer to include it in the psychedelic wave of "ism's" already circulating around the Western hemisphere. But this music, here and now, is that of the Pink Floyd, a group of four young musicians, a light man, and an array of equipment sadistically designed to shatter the strongest nerves. The Pink Floyd are new on the London scene - they've stupified audiences at all-night raves, in church halls, at the Albert Hall, and at various tours in Britain. They've yet to make their debut on records but perhaps the Pink Floyd themselves are most qualified to tell you what its all about:

NM: We didn't start out trying to get anything new, y'know we just... it entirely happened. We originally started virtually as an R&B group.

SB: Yeah, sometimes, we just sorta let loose a bit and started hitting the guitar a bit harder and not worrying quite so much about the chords.

RW: It stopped being third rate academic rock, y'know; it started being a sort of intuitive groove, really.

NM: It's free form. In terms of construction it's almost like jazz, where you start off with a riff and then you improvise on this except...

RW: Where it differs from jazz is that if you're improvising around a jazz number, if it's a 16 bar number you stick to 16 bar choruses and you take 16 bar solos, whereas with us it starts and we may play 3 choruses of something that lasts for 17 and a half bars each chorus and then it'll stop happening and it'll stop happening when it stops happening AND it may be 423 bars later or 4.

SB: And it's not like jazz music 'cos...

NM: We all want to be pop stars - we don't want to be jazz musicians.

SB: Exactly. And I mean we play for people to dance to - they don't seem to dance much now but that's the initial idea. So we play loudly and we're playing with electric guitars, so we're utilising all the volume and all the effects you can get. But now in fact we're trying to develop this by using the lights.

NM: Yes of course.

RW: But the thing about the jazz thing is that we don't have this great musician thing. Y'know, we don't really look upon ourselves as musicians as such, y'know, period... reading the dots, all that stuff.

CBC: How important is the visual aspect of the production?

All: Very, very important.

SB: It's quite a revelation to have people operating something like lights while you're playing as a direct stimulus to what you're playing. It's rather like audience reaction except it's sort of on a higher level, you know, you can respond to it and then the lights will respond back...

NM: There are various sorts of lights - there's simply flashing spotlights that are worked off a sort of control board rather like a piano, so that they can be used very rhythmically. And then there are sort of effect lights that are usually coloured slides or wet slides which are slides with some sort of liquids on them so that you get some movement. Or they might be actual movies as such - in which case as they have their own set speed and sequence that can't be altered by the operators this changes the... our formation to some extent 'cos we tend immediately to play to that.

CBC: What happens at a performance? What happens with your audience, what's the feel you get?

RW: Well, if we get very excited, and we get very excited when we're playing very well, then the audience gets very excited as well.

CBC: Do they dance?

NM: They may dance. It depends on the sort of music and what's happening.

SB: Yeah and anyway you hardly ever get the sort of dancing right from the beginning that you get just as a response to the rhythm. Usually people stand there and if they... [laughs] get into some sort of hysteria while they're there...

NM: ...The dancing takes the form of a frenzy which is very good.

RW: They don't all stand in a line and do the Madison. The audience tend to be standing there and just one or two people maybe will suddenly flip out and rush forward and start leaping up and down...

SB: Freak out I think is the word, you're looking for!

NM: It's an excellent thing because this is what dancing is...

SB: This is REALLY what dancing is!!

CBC: Is the music destined to replace the Beatles? Are the melodic harmonies, poetic lyrics and soulful rhythms of today to be swept into the archives, totally undermined by a psychotic sweep of sound and vision as this, displayed by the Pink Floyd? Large pockets of enthusiasts from all over the country are determined that it shall, despite the powerful opposition of the majority of leading disc jockeys. But the most enthusiastic fans of all, quite fittingly, are the Pink Floyd's managers:

PJ: I heard them once; I was in a very bad mood. I was at a club and heard them, and the sort of sound they were making was a sound I hadn't heard before, and I was just totally knocked out. It's er... I suppose I felt there was a freshness about what they were doing, there was a sort of freedom about the way they were playing. They weren't just hacking through the old numbers, playing all the old hits of yesterday and today, and sort of... you didn't feel that there was just a regimented group just going through the motions, y'know, there was a fantastic liveness about it and these huge sheets of sound were building up and... this was a sound I hadn't heard before. And I immediately was simply knocked out by it and started getting interested in them.

The whole light scene and things like this sort of came out of from, I suppose, a different direction. I mean, the way this did come from the "psychedelic movement" as far as I was concerned but its always been a thing that I've dug. I've always thought that lights and music and things like that, and sounds and vision should all go together. And it seemed the right time for it to happen.

I think another thing which is very important, is that, y'know, one feels that the pop market as it were, is now capable of taking something far more than it used to, y'know. Previously it was all sort of Jim Reeves and those sort of simple things played over and over again. But increasingly I noticed that clubs, the thing that always used to get the really huge applause always when the instrumentals - the things where the musicians really gave themselves a chance to do something new and really different. And so out of this whole sort of rock'n'roll movement you got a sort of instantly attractive beat, a very strong beat, a very powerful beat which anyone can respond to, and then on top of this you've got the electronic thing which gives you this fantastic dynamics and excitement and ability just to pierce through peoples... sometimes deadness.

One can penetrate right through into their minds almost sheerly by volume and sound and noise and distortion that gives a tremendous increased awareness of what's going on, y'know, you hear things much more. When you've finished listening to the Pink Floyd you don't just clap and sort of hum the thing, hum the tune they've just been playing, you just go: "FWAAUUGGHH!". Y'know, it's an experience, you've been through a total sensory experience - both visual and audio. And I think this has an appeal, not only to intellectuals - there's a lot of in common between Pink Floyd and people like Alba Dater and Ornet Coleman are doing, but it's got also an immediacy of appeal to the kids which I think is great and it's a sort of common denominator which goes right across - anyone can dig the Pink Floyd I think.

CBC: Can you capture this strictly on sound? Let's say in terms of recordings...

PJ: I think our records will be very different from our stageshows. I think our records inevitably... first of all there's the three minute limitation; secondly, you can't sort of, walk around the kitchen humming to the Pink Floyd. I mean, if you had a Pink Floyd sort of sound they're making in the clubs, coming over the radio while you're doing the washing-up you'd probably scream. I suspect that our records are going to have to be much more audio, much more, y'know, they are written for a different situation. Listening to a gramophone record in your home or on the radio is very different from going into a club or going into a theatre and watching a stage show. They're two different things that requires a different approach. We think we can do both.

NH: Norman Smith on "See Emily Play":

NS: Yeah, well, "Emily" of course... I was in from the birth of that and that was kind of commercialised if you like. There was some little bit of arrangement went in that, there was a bit of... gimmickry... in the recorded thing... cos I saw that as a single straight away. And obviously one was looking for a follow-up to "Arnold Layne" - I was at any rate, on behalf of the record company. That was the one that I chose and hoped that they would agree with me. It did in the end, I can't really remember whether it was unanimous or not, but I would think it possibly was three-quarters unanimous and [laughs] one was not too keen.

Syd Barrett was with the group in those days and Syd was the main writer, and it was a pretty difficult job with Syd because I think Syd used music - I'll put it this way - used music with sort of lyrical phrasing or if you like he used lyrics with sort of musical phrasing, and it was a statement being made at a given time, that meant that if you came back five minutes later to do another take you probably wouldn't get the same performance, and I think if I remember rightly we went through quite a few of Syd's songs and then they played me a few, and it's very difficult to pick out which I liked and which I didn't like, so we'd come back and maybe try these songs again and these were different versions so [laughs] it made it even more difficult. So the early days were quite difficult really but as a sort of very slow, unwinding process.

NH: During that time, Syd's problems were beginning to affect the other individuals in the band. Dave Gilmour, who plays guitar on this track, was brought in to replace the ailing Barrett, and Nick Mason remembers some of the feelings that prevailed at that time:

NM: It's easy now to look back on "the past" and try and give it some sort of shape and form, but at the time you're just... you're in a total state of confusion muddling about because you're trying to be in this band and be successful or make it work, and things aren't working out and you don't really understand why. You can't believe that someone's deliberately trying to screw it up and yet the other half of you is saying "this man's crazy - he's trying to DESTROY ME!" It gets very personal, you get very worked up into a state of extreme rage. I mean, obviously there was some incredible moments of... clarity, where you realise that things are not right - like the wonderful American tour which will live forever. Syd detuning his guitar all the way through one number, striking the string and detuning the guitar, which is very modern but [laughs] very difficult for a band to follow or play with. And, other occasions where he more or less just ceased playing and stand there, leaving us to muddle along as best we could. And times like that, you think [laughs] "what we need is someone else!" Or at least some help.

DG: Nick actually came to me and sort of... "nudge, nudge... if such and such happened, and if this, and if that... would you be interested in it..." and went through that whole thing in a fairly roundabout way, suggested that this might come off at some point. And then just after Christmas, right after their Olympia gig, I actually got a phone call... where I was staying I didn't actually have a phone, or they didn't know it, but they sent a message through someone else that they knew that knew me, for me to get in touch for taking the job, so to speak. There was no real discussion, or any meetings, to think about it or any auditions or anything like that. They just said did I want to, and I said yes, and it was as simple as that. It was totally impossible for me to understand the way Syd's mind was working at that time.

It was also from having been to two or three of their gigs, impossible for me to see how they could carry on like that, because Syd was very obviously not up to being in that group at that time, doing what he was doing. It was painfully obvious that they were just kind of marking time at that moment. And actually joining the group was a very difficult thing, cos originally there was some kind of a plan for there to be five people and for Syd to phase out of the live thing and... but keep on writing... but we realised that there was an impossibility almost as soon as we'd thought of it, or they'd thought of it. So that idea very rapidly got dropped. We did do three or four gigs with five people playing - pretty strange... The first four, five, six months that I'm in the band I really didn't feel confident enough to actually start playing myself - I actually sat there mostly playing just rhythm guitar and I suppose, to be honest, at the time trying to sound a bit like Syd. But that didn't last very long - I mean, it was obvious the group had to change into something completely different and they hadn't asked me to join to sound exactly like Syd, but I mean - the numbers they were doing were still Syd's numbers mostly.

Consequently there's that kind of a fixed thing in your head of how they have been played previously, and that kind of, makes it very much harder for you to strike out on your own and do it exactly how you would do it... and you haven't got a clue how you would do it really because there's already an imprinted thing in your brain of how the guitar is played on those things. Consequently it did take some time before I started getting into actually being a member of the band and feeling free to impose my own... guitar-playing style on it.

NS: There wasn't much point really, particularly with Syd there wasn't much point in changing chords or suggesting flashy sort of chords, y'know - jazz based chords or anything like that, just nice chords or analysing the musical content of anyone's composition. There wasn't much point in doing that. I think what I had to look for really was, first of all of course what they were about - what they wanted to say, and the statement they wanted to make. And to help them as much as I could there, of course, with suggestions, but I think mainly to look for sounds... I would think at any rate that that's what Floyd were mainly about - the creation of sounds to enhance the statement or the mood...

NH: And John Peel, veteran BBC disc jockey, remembers the Floyd, in those early days:

JP: The first time I ever heard of them was when I was still working in California and it sounds very grand, but I'd sent a band over from Riverside to London, to stay with my monther actually in Notting Hill, called The Misunderstood, who made a couple of classic singles for Fontana and then disappeared, pretty much.

And the lead singer came back to try and sort out his draft thing and he came along, he came to stay with us in San Bernadino, and he kept going on about these people that he'd seen in London, Hendrix and the Pink Floyd, and I was very taken with the name at the time - the Pink Floyd seemed like a good name to me (still does, actually). So, one of the first things I wanted to do when I got back here, which was in the spring of 1967 to go and work for Radio London, was to go and see Hendrix and the Floyd and indeed I did. The first time I ever saw them was at the old UFO club in Tottenham Court Road, where all of the hippies used to put on our Kaftans and bells and beads and go and lie on the floor in an altered condition and listen to whatever was going on.

The Floyd were going on one night, I must admit, I'm ashamed to say it, I don't remember the Floyd as vividly as I remember Arthur Brown, 'cos I mean Arthur Brown, at that time, used to just stand there and insult the members of the audience in much the same way as people like Johnny Rotten seem to do now.

And, so the first time I ever... I used to see the Floyd y'know, but they were just like a band that you saw, y'know you didn't really pay a lot of attention to them, and I think the first time I really took a great deal of notice of what they were doing, was at the time of the release of the first LP. And then it suddenly seemed, you suddenly realised, like with the first Hendrix LP really, you suddenly realise that was something very, very important and I'd like to be able to convince you that I was into the Pink Floyd years before anyone else, but I was probably into the Pink Floyd a year after everybody else! But that first LP obviously came as a bit of a revelation...

http://www.brain-damage.co.uk/interviews/pfcap1.html

Part 2; Capital Radio, London, 24th December 1976.
The following is one part of the legendary Capital Radio Pink Floyd Story - the history of the band, told by the band themselves in a set of interviews undertaken in 1976, and broadcast at the end of 1976/start of 1977. This transcription done by Matt Johns, Brain Damage - please seek permission from us before using elsewhere.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The programme presenter was Nicky Horne. Abbreviations used as follows:
NM: Nick Mason, RW: Roger Waters, DG: David Gilmour, RWr: Rick Wright, ST: Storm Thorgerson,
NH: Nicky Horne, NS: Norman Smith, PJ: Peter Jenner, RG: Ron Geesin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JP: Interestingly enough, actually, I live now in a little town up in East Anglia. A little village actually, called Great Fimbrew, which is near Stowmarket, which is another place that people have never heard of, when I first moved up there I was buying a dustbin at the local Woolworths, and this fellow came up to me and said, "It's John Peel, isn't it?" and I said, "Yes". He said "Having you move into the area is the best thing that's happened since the Pink Floyd played here".

And apparently they did a gig in the football ground at Stowmarket back in 1967 when they were first starting out, and everybody went along expecting a band playing the top 20, and there were about a dozen people who went there who were knocked out by them - the local freaks and loonies. Everybody else hated them, but it's the biggest thing musically that's happened in Stowmarket ever, I think...

RW: Ten years ago the business was very different. The "album" thing didn't really happen 'til a bit...well, it was beginning to happen then... it was just beginning to happen that you could have bands who were popular without them releasing a single. And we had a producer, Norman, who was involved in that whole syndrome; that "single" syndrome.

NS: I'm not too sure that the dealers could... know exactly what they were about. It was a terribly difficult thing that they were trying to express and I guess this is where an awful lot of dissatisfaction of the end product came about, as will do naturally. I mean, obviously there is a... It's very difficult for any artist to get "the absolute" or any producer, for that matter, to get the absolute end of an end product. Thank God we don't get that, because obviously I think this is what motivates them, this is what keeps you going, to strive for something to be better next time.

But, with the Floyd's type of material in performance... I think that really they were just as much a stage group, just as much a gig group as they were a recording group. And if there, in some way, could have been a meeting of those two half-way, so that you got the best of both worlds, then everybody perhaps would have been... I mean, with the same performance you understand, so perhaps a live recording or something like that suggests what I'm talking about...

NH: Storm Thorgerson is one of the men responsible for the Pink Floyd album covers. He's been a friend of the band for many years, and here's how he remembers those early days:

ST: Why I think 66/67 is interesting for the music business is that I think there was a power shift from record companies to groups. And a concomene to that power shift was that not only would they write their own material, but the Floyd did their own material, their own "thing" - doing their own sleeves, 'cos the Beatles things were atrocious to begin with. They were really cruddy [laughs] I thought... but I'm sure the Beatles do too. And I think Floyd after "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" which was somehow, although you may not look on it as a nostalgic piece of picture... graphics, it's actually not very... didn't seem to say very much about the Pink Floyd. I think they felt that they'd like to say something more about Pink Floyd on the sleeve.

DG: It's mistaken, to think that Syd was the active force in the band - anti-commercialism. Certainly Norman tried to make us more commercial and we sometimes had arguments about things that we thought we liked in one way, and he thought we more commercial another way. In fact, I would suggest that "Piper..." is a far more overtly commercial sort of album than the next one, "Saucerful Of Secrets", the title track, a commercial thing. It was certainly the most experimental thing that the group had done, I think.

RWr: That was at the time when we were splitting from Norma. He was getting less and less, if you like, involved in what we were doing, and virtually at the end he was just sitting in the background listening, but he realised I think that we were taking over production and it was a natural thing - a natural process. So he just sort of let it happen, and, there wasn't a sudden break, or a bad feeling at all; there wasn't all of us one day saying, "Right, Norman, you're out!" We, all of us, realised that was what was happening, 'cos his good point I think early on was teaching us how to work in a studio. A lot of producers with a band, maybe not us because we wouldn't let it happen, but the band would sit aside while the producer did all the work. They'd never learn anything.

Whereas, he got us to be really interested in that side of it as soon as we started, so we learnt a lot, and then by the time "Ummagumma" came out we all felt, "Well, we could do it ourselves". And he wasn't really interested, I don't think, in us after Syd left. He was into the songs, but "Saucerful Of Secrets" he just couldn't - he didn't - understand. He said, "Well, I think it's rubbish. It won't sell a single copy, but go ahead and do it, if you want" sort of thing. Whereas we all believed it was gonna be one of the best things we'd ever put onto record. Which I think it was at that time, and... but it was a natural process, he just slowly got into the background, and then finally we said "OK".

DG: I contributed what I could, but I was, quite honestly, a little on the outside through it all. I wasn't really a... I certainly didn't feel like a full member, and I wasn't right up front contributing all the way on it... I think my quarter composer share on "Saucerful Of Secrets" is not really I don't think that I had a lot to do with writing it...

NH: Those early Floyd gigs have almost become folk-lore, and John Peel remembers:

JP: I used to see them a lot actually, y'know, the end of the sixties. I always claim that the best outdoor event that I've ever been to was the Pink Floyd concert in Hyde Park, when I hired a boat and rowed out, and I lay on the bottom of the boat, in the way that we hippies did, in the middle of the Serpentine, and just listened to the band play, and their music then, as I think, suited the open air perfectly. It was... it sounds ludicrous now, it's the kind of thing you can get away with saying at the time and which is now, in these harsher times sounds a bit silly... but I mean it was like a religious experience, it was marvelous. They played "A Saucerful Of Secrets" and things... they just seemed to fill the whole sky and everything y'know. And to coincide perfectly with the water and the lapping of the water and the trees and everything. It just seemed to be the perfect event. I think that it was the nicest concert I've ever been to, in fact, and in a complete contrast to that I remember another, very good one at a club in Birmingham which was very famous for a lot of years, called "Mothers", in Erdington, which was a marvelous gig to do because I've always liked the Midlands, for the audiences and things, 'cos they're very matter-of-fact and down-to-earth... and you have to do well in order to impress them.

I suppose that's true practically anywhere really, but... um... well, I don't know whether it is actually, 'cos nowadays you get that sort of conditioned response from the audience where if they're seeing somebody famous, they'll go mad for them; even if they're being very boring. And the Floyd played there, in this great beery club it was, and... they were marvelous there too. They did - it was one of these things which is very annoying. They did a great "Interstellar Overdrive" which went on for about 25-30 minutes, that I wrote such an ecstatic report about it, that I got into "Pseuds Corner" in "Private Eye" on the strength of it, which was another of my ambitions fulfilled. I wrote a whole bunch of stuff about the sound of dying galaxies which I think I'd actually stolen from a science fiction book I'd read... but it got me in "Pseuds Corner". But it really was like that. It was just a marvelous performance, and they taped it and they gave me a copy of the tape, and I used to listen to it like every day. Then some burglar broke into my flat and took it, along with a whole bunch of Dylan tapes, which was very annoying. But... I don't think there were many bands then, or now, which could work so well in two such widely differing places you know, environments...

RWr: Well, "Mothers" is a fantastic place to play anyway, I think we must've played there quite a few times and it was the place where... well, one of the places we chose to do the album because it's such a nice place to play, and the people who ran the club were really nice, and I can't remember much about that evening we recorded it, except everything went wrong [laughs]. You know, the mics, and we were recording on a four track as well, trying to get this whole thing down. I remember... it was a good gig and for me the tapes were disappointing afterwards. But there were a lot of technical faults with the tape... To be honest, that gig doesn't stand out to any other gig we've done in "Mothers".

JP: Now you know that something like "Atom Heart Mother", particularly in America, people would spend weeks in debate about what the title meant, you know, and people were quite capable of starting religions [laughs] based on "Atom Heart Mother". You know, there was some attractive blond woman who'd be called "Atom Heart Mother" and the rest of them would call themselves little Red Indian names and worship her. And you know that sort of thing goes on, whereas if they got fat, or started to lose their hair, they'd be chucked out!

But, it was called "Atom Heart Mother" actually because they were going to record the work on a concert programme at the BBC, and the producer, Geoff Griffin, asked them what the thing was called and they didn't have a name for it, so I nipped out an "Evening Standard" and we looked through the headlines and tried to find a suitable headline that would fit as a title for the work; and there was a little story in there about some woman who'd had an atom powered pace-maker put in her chest and it was just headlined "ATOM HEART MOTHER", and Roger Waters said, "Oh, yes, that's a nice name, we'll call it that!"

RW: Well, the idea came about because Dave, he came up with the original riff. I can remember that very clearly strangely enough, he played it, somewhere or other, we were rehearsing somewhere or other and he played that riff.. and we all listened to it and thought, "Oh, that's quite nice..." but we all thought the same thing which was that it sounds like a theme from some awful Western; it had that kind of... slight pastiche, heroic, plodding quality to it... of horses silhouetted against the sunset. Which is why we thought it'd be a good idea to play on that really and cover it in horns and strings and voices and whatever else. So that's why we did it; because it sounded like a... very heavy movie score. I think we found... I have no idea why we fouled it up. I think we probably did it because we were... we felt rather inadequate to cope with it.

NH: The person responsible for arranging "Atom Heart Mother" was poet, musician, and solo performer Ron Geesin. Here he tells how he got involved with "Atom Heart Mother":

RG: I'd seen them all at that time, I think. 'Cos Rick just lived down... I was in Notting Hill, he was down South Notting Hill [laughs] looking back now I think that they were, at that time, they had hit creative exhaustion. They had been battling away with each other and had not learnt the skills of pulling off, retreating from each other, and they I think were rather heavily battling. I think they were creatively exhausted and they needed the influence of an outside view. That was it. That's the view now, so as I was their mate at the time, they proposed this thing that they wanted brass and choir on, this long piece, and they provided me with really what I would call the backing tracks, probably they were a bit more than backing tracks - they did have the sound that was the astral slide guitar on them in places, but I really took the... backing tracks and formed all the top, all the... I don't know, icing on the cake, or something... whatever analogy... working, most of the time on my own, but part of the choir section was done with Rick, say the first half of it was done in collaboration with him, but I did all the writing. It was really just him and I discussing where the float should go, where the wisps of smoke and lines ought to go.

RWr: The way we did it was overlaying the musicians onto the backing track and you can hear it on the record - it just sounds... it doesn't flow very well. There's lots of edits on it, and... I wasn't happy, I wasn't... I was at the time; thinking back I'm not happy now of the recording of "Atom Heart Mother", but I did enjoy playing it live when it worked, particularly in America, where for some reason musicians just seemed to get... just got into the thing a lot more. I don't know why. I certainly enjoyed playing it live 'cos it was a totally new experience of well, working with other people. The actual recording of it is not that good, I don't think.

NH: Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, remembers the thinking behind the "Atom Heart Mother" sleeve:

ST: There was a very conscious attempt to undo some of the very obvious psychedelic traps. I mean, there were quite of lot of sleeves after that, all these sleeves coming from the West Coast, that were a bit jumbled and highly imaginative - what I call psychedelia, and full of colours and images all swirling together and complex. So there was a desire to unearth that, and that was all based on the notion that whatever else you may say about the Floyd I do think their music reaches on a couple of levels - I don't think it's singular.

So that I think you can appreciate it as... a very romantic atmosphere mood thing... but they were unlike quite a lot of other people in rock'n'roll - fairly intelligent and knew some of the kind of... difficult to explain it... but knew something about themselves... a little bit about themselves - were able to kind of laugh at it a little bit and know the other side. So in order to give an indication that the Floyd had perhaps that little bit more depth... without it wasn't a kind of "better than thou" notion, it was just a descriptive thing.

At least you could say, if nothing else about the Floyd, it was multi-level, right? We wanted to do something that in fact was that but wouldn't look like it. So "Atom Heart Mother" is really a sleeve that was an undoing - a non Pink Floyd sleeve. It was very much a conscious attempt to do a pretty ordinary damn thing. I mean, that was my idea, to do a kind of non-cover... but not in a high-art sense, but to do a kind of common or garden - away from all that psychedelia, knowing that the Floyd could handle that, even though their music may be romantic and atmospheric because they've got an ability... alright, they were characteristic whereby there'd be more than one level involved, they could on their sleeve handle something that went totally the other way.

So, we had three ideas for that sleeve. One was a picture of a cow. One was a picture of a person diving into water, which is funny since that came up again but in a different context altogether, and the other picture was a woman walking out a door. All, in a way, very flat, and un-psychedelic, and un-heady. "Ummagumma" was heady, see, "Ummagumma" had an intellectuality about it, right, so they intended to undo that, but knowing if you did that consciously it would still carry a lot of weight behind it. So, in fact although we did... when the band saw it I think they enjoyed the humour of it most. I think to be a cow, and such a cow!

In terms of the notion we started out with, it totally backfired. But in terms of being a good sleeve, which I think it is, and a good picture, I mean it's a very simple idea. Actually, the idea came from a friend of mine in conversation. He just said, "How about a picture of a cow?" as an example of something pretty damn ordinary, and immediately he said it, I kind of twigged and went out and shot a cow. (In Essex it was actually, outside Potters Bar) [laughs] and I took a picture like how I remembered at school, in an animal textbook - it's supposed to be the ultimate picture of a cow - it's just totally cow... it should say "COW" to you.

But, riding on top of that are all those other thoughts although it's just a cow, right? Since all those other thoughts are in it consciously - you just put a cow on a Matt Monroe album or if you put it on the Wombles, it would never have carried the weight it carries now on a Pink Floyd album. And giving it that title as well, which was equally extraneous, seemed to work very well, and yes, it stood out very clearly [laughs] and was certainly not a non-event.

NH: As Ron Geesin said earlier, he felt that the Floyd were having their personality problems during the recording of "Atom Heart Mother". I asked Nick Mason if the band have ever been close to break up.

NM: Absolutely not! We are absolutely as close as anything, it's a great honour and pleasure to work with the other members of the band! No, the - yes, of course it has. I mean, working in a band is... very, very difficult! Very difficult indeed. Because it's a very close relationship, 'cos you work together not only because you love each other, but actually because of all the other "things" that come with it. All that lust for success, or love, or whatever is the problem that makes people join rock'n'roll bands. And... it's murder. I mean a lot of the time it's absolutely 'orrible to have to be with people that you're not... seeing eye to eye with at every moment. Yeah inevitably there's moments where everyone just feels like packing it in. And... it isn't like we have a row and someone leaves the room threatening to leave - it tends to move in waves more, I think. Perhaps... it depends what activity we're on. I tend to feel like I've had enough towards the end of every American tour, and I think, for me, it's all over. In fact, although I have felt this, it never has been over.

And I think a lot of it is to do with frustration - particularly amongst writers which I'm not really... I'm talking particularly perhaps about Roger, where perhaps he feels that his ideas aren't getting across, or that he's having to fight to get his ideas across, or perhaps at another moment where Roger's cool and the others feel, Rick or Dave perhaps, frustrated that they're doing something... that they're not getting their ideas across. I mean all one can say is that it would appear that a solo career is just as painful as a group career. I think under the threat of the other three doing solo albums,and mean not doing one, I'd do one. I mean it's like "Ummagumma" - if pushed [laughs] you can do something.

http://www.brain-damage.co.uk/interviews/pfcap2.html

Part 3; Capital Radio, London, 31st December 1976.
The following is one part of the legendary Capital Radio Pink Floyd Story - the history of the band, told by the band themselves in a set of interviews undertaken in 1976, and broadcast at the end of 1976/start of 1977. This transcription done by Matt Johns, Brain Damage - please seek permission from us before using elsewhere.

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The programme presenter was Nicky Horne. Abbreviations used as follows:
NM: Nick Mason, RW: Roger Waters, DG: David Gilmour, RWr: Rick Wright,
NH: Nicky Horne, RTH: Roger The Hat

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NH: The Pink Floyd, over the years, have been involved in several film scores. The first of these was a movie called "More".

DG: I can't remember how we did the film "More" or why. I mean I can't remember how we happened to meet the guy; but meet him we did and we saw the film and we thought, "well..." but we wanted to break into big time movie scores so we said, "OK we'll do it" and he gave us Ј600 each or somefink [sniffs] and off we trotted and we did it. Later on we did "Obscured By Clouds" for the same guy, just because he was a friend of ours really - Barbet Schroedor. And in between these two we did a score for "Zabriskie Point" for Antonioni, which we spent three or four weeks in Rome doing. Seemed like an age, and he didn't like anything for his film, really, that we did. He only used three pieces for the film.

One was a kind of a remake - similarity thing to "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" which is probably what he got us for in the first place. There was a bit of a... kind of awful, rubbishy echo stuff with voices from the film soundtrack all mixed in by us at the beginning. And the other was a Country and Western tune, which he could have got done ten times better by numerous American groups, but he used ours... very strange. And of course, we would've done pretty well anything, well, not anything... but certainly near the beginning we would've done almost anything in terms of film; if anyone had asked us to do film scores, we would've done them. I think.

We wanted to have a go at it - it wasn't that we wanted to stop being a rock'n'roll group and going out and doing all that sort of stuff... it was kind of an exercise. Very enjoyable to do, and quick, and you could make long meandering things just for fun, which wouldn't really necessarily held together on a record.

Some of the ideas we put down were just completely stupid and insane, but we did them just for laughs. We did things like... we'd tell everyone the key and then they'd have to leave the studio while one person would come in and he'd know the key and that's all. He'd play on the same piece of tape without hearing what the other person had played. And we got all of us to do that. AWFUL, absolutely awful! Still, it was jolly good fun anyway.

All these things we did, I think, we did 24 little bits of stuff, and we called them "Nothing Parts 1 - 24" and "Echoes" started off as "The Return Of The Son Of Nothing", I think, and that started off from a piano piece where Rick was in the studio at EMI with a piano and a microphone in it, plugged through a Leslie. And he had it turned up reasonably loud, but there was this specific harmonic that kept coming out much louder for some reason; every time you "pinged" this one particular note on the piano it came out louder, and that is the "ping" note on the thing; and then he started playing a little bit, and every once in a while he'd hit that note again; and we just pottered around a little bit and then we actually put a bit of it down with him actually playing and hitting the note... and that was the start of "Echoes".

Because of the way these things work, and you don't always get the same feedback-thing happening exactly the same way, we were never able to actually duplicate it later on, so the actual beginning piano piece is that very first one that we recorded at Abbey Road. When we actually recorded "Echoes" - the whole of it, at Air Studios, as I say, we couldn't duplicate that piece so we actually edited it in at the beginning and it changes over from that piece at the first place where the other instruments came in, or where the chord changes or something. And it went on from there.

It's one of those - and when you play a note it repeat-echoes it afterwards, and there's all sorts of rhythms you can set up like playing one note several times over, and that thing sets up a rhythm with you and you sort of make a rhythm between yourself and the repeat echo unit. We fooled around with that to a certain extent on various things, and Roger put a bass through one day and tried it, and that is what "One Of These Days" is basically all about. It's Roger playing a bass through that thing - thumping one note most of the time, and because of what that evoked, that's what the whole thing came out of. It was just that sound and then later on when we'd recorded that thing it didn't sound like it held up on its own as a whole number, and we did another piece with a bass going through the same echo repeat system but also with the vibrato thing... a heavy vibrato, which is the whole middle section, which we then cut in and started laying on all the other boogaloo - echo on farfeisa organs and fast guitars.

NH: But why "One Of These Days (I'm Gonna Cut You Into Little Pieces)"?

DG: It just sounded very violent, and we like a joke as much as anyone else [laughs] - it just came out. I can't remember exactly how it happened. It's an old theme for us... "I'm gonna cut you into little pieces", and "be careful with that axe, Eugene" and... they're similar sorts of themes aren't they?

NH: "Dark Side Of The Moon" IS Pink Floyd. I asked Roger Waters how it all came about:

RW: Well, there are several answers to that. I think you'll find when you speak to the other chaps, 'cos that's what one discovers over the years, is that one's own memories of how things happened and other people's memories of how things happened are often very different. My memory of how it happened was that we went to a place in... Broadhurst Gardens, off... somewhere in Kilburn, I think it is - West Hampstead, maybe it's called... anyway, we were there for a period of time - a couple of weeks or something... and we sat in a little room and played our instruments, and we got quite a lot of stuff together - music - no lyrics, or ideas or anything.

We had all these different pieces, like the riff of "Money" came out of those sessions, and so on and so forth. I remember that happening. The only other thing that I can remember about it all was having a meeting in Nicky's kitchen one day, and I think... I'm not quite sure what happened, but I THINK what happened was that I thought, and said, "listen, if it was some kind of theme that ran through it - y'know - life, with a heartbeat and that... and then you could have other bits coming in, like the pressures that tend to be anti-life - how about that?" And then we all started writing out a list of what those pressures might be. And that was that. And then I started writing lyrics with all these different bits of music that all came from different people in the band - well, not all, but... [inhales deeply] I started writing a series of sets of lyrics about the different things we talked about. It's all terribly simple!

NM: What the album was going to be about... which was about the... what we felt were the stress and strain of our lives and what was wrong with them or what we were motivated by and so on. And so we ended with a piece of paper upon which was written various subjects that would be covered, and work from there. There wasn't any sitting down and saying let's produce something so crystal clear and delightful that everyone will adore it.

NH: But how did that initial idea come about? Do you all sit down and say, right, well...

NM: Yes... I think we sat down and talked about what the album might be about. I mean, we're talking about three - four years ago, and I can't remember exactly what happened or how it happened. It might've been somebody's brilliant idea who's going to be SO UPSET that I'm sitting here happily saying WE, 'cos that's the stuff that our best bits of domestic world or all three [?] are about. But credit where credit's due, and who's done what and all that...

DG: Well, we started out working about it the same way we'd done on other things. We sat in a rehearsal room and we had pieces of music, and we sat and rehearsed them. And Roger came in with specific things, and stuff, and I guess sometime after we had started and got quite a few pieces of music sort of formulated vaguely, Roger came up with the specific idea of... going through all the things that people go through and what drives them mad, and from that moment obviously our direction slightly changed. We started tailoring the pieces we already had to fit that concept and Roger would tailor words in to fit the music that we had, and from that moment on, it had a new impetus to it...

I mean, the way it is set out very simply and clearly... the ideas that are behind it and what it's trying to say, I think... Roger tried definately in his lyrics to make them very simple, straightforward, and easily assimable - easy to understand.

Partly because of this mystique and image thing you were talking about before, and how people read things into other lyrics that weren't there, and an idea that before had been put in a more... a less clear way, a bit more obscurely presented... in that instance, in the ones that are more obscurely presented, people were continually getting the wrong idea and I certainly think that Roger was fed up with that, and certainly I remember talking about it once or twice, that it would be nice to make it very simple and clear for people to understand. Not that it was totally successful in that line, 'cos of course people read hundreds of things into it even then that weren't there...

NH: During the recording of "Dark Side Of The Moon", the Floyd themselves did several interviews with anyone who happened to be around the Abbey Road Studios at the time. The technique they used was to give people a number of cards on which questions were printed - questions that related to the themes of "Dark Side Of The Moon". The interviewees then had to answer the questions as spontaneously as they could. And I asked Rick Wright why this technique was used:

RWr: We simply wanted people's reaction on a very quick level - a spontaneous way too... so they look at a card that says "Have you ever been violent" or "What do you think of death", and so before they can think about it they have to say something 'cos the microphone's on. It was... that's why we did it... it was Roger's idea... I think it worked 'cos we got some very interesting replies, comments on their thoughts...

NH: In the next episode of The Pink Floyd Story, you'll be able to hear excerpts from a lot of these interviews, portions of which appear on the final recording of "Dark Side Of The Moon". Here's one such recording; the interviewee is a road manager (not with the Pink Floyd) who's known affectionately as "Roger The Hat". He's being interviewed by Roger Waters:

RW: [Sounding stoned, and slurring throughout] Y'see, what would be best really, I mean I might have to prompt you occasionally. I might even have to ask you a question... but what would be best would be if you could just tell us about it, 'cos I've told you what the record's about.

RTH: Right - but tell you about it in what way? [also sounds stoned]

RW: Any way you like...

RTH: Ooohhh...

RW: You want me to ask you some questions?

RTH: I think that would be better, man.

RW: ...'Cos you've been on the road for ten years, right, so it's all happened, so we wanna know just what you think about various things...

RTH: Dig it. Dig it!

RW: Like life in bands, and life on the road, and what you think of other things as well.

RTH: Right.

RW: Now, something that's very interesting for instance, is what's your personal opinion... why do you think a lot of bands split up?

RTH: Egotism. I would say. Er... I would say mainly egotism. That's one reason. There's many others man, but that's one. I would say that's... um... the one that immediately comes to mind. Egotism.

RW: I think I'd go along with that...

RTH: MMMMM! I mean - you should know what musicians are like?!

RW: What are musicians like?

RTH: Well, you see, really they should be normal people - normal - but someone once said to me that a proper artist has got a right to be temperamental. I think I've been unfortunate in meeting every temperamental artist in the business! Nah! They're temperamental, that's all.

RW: Why do you think they're temperamental?

RTH: Because of the... nature of the work they're doing.

RW: Do you think it might be because they get too much power?

RTH: No - definately not. I would say too much stress on themselves. Given false ideals. How's it going?

RW: Alright.

RTH: FAR OUT!

RW: I'll take a bit of that for me, you don't mind if I give you some do you?

RTH: Help yourself.

RW: Right...

RTH: The initial shock's over!

RW: OK. That was a very good answer.

RTH: Thank you. Do I get ten out of ten for that?

RW: Yeah.

RTH: Far out.

RW: You get eleven out of ten for that one. [Lights "cigarette", coughs] Right, what else was there? I'll tell you what another bit if it was about, which Bobby could probably have got into but I don't think it was explained enough in the question so he didn't really get into talking about it; and that is: there's a track on the record about violence, right...

RTH: Oh yeah. I'm into that.

RW: And it's called, "Us and Them", simply because when you're in a violent situation there's always like you, who's...

RTH: Dig it.

RW: Right... and there's them. And they're two very different things. And one of the questions we asked the others was "when was the last time you thumped somebody?", "why did you do it?", "Do you think you were in the right?"

RTH: Oh yeah. The last time that I thumped someone was only the other day, as a matter of fact. I was driving along the road towards Northwood Hills where my brother lives, and this cat in front of me was driving his car and all of a sudden he stopped and opened his door, and from where I was in me truck, I could see that he never looked in his mirror - he just opened his door, which caused me to swerve on the other side of the road, very narrowly missing an oncoming motor car. So I pulled in, and like a gentleman I went up to him and said, "Now look man - like, THAT AIN'T COOL. Right, the thing to do man, if you're gonna stop your car, you stop, you look in your mirror, and if there's nothing about you open your door. But you never done that, and like, it nearly cost me my life" I said. Well, the guy was very rude, he WAS rude. In fact, his last words to me were, he called me a "long haired git". So, I felt compelled. Well, seeing as he was that rude, I had to... retribution was close at hand. So that was the last time I was violent, about three days ago.

RW: Do you think you were justified... you put one on him...

RTH: Definately, yeah, definately. 'Cos the thing is, man, when you're driving on the road, I mean like, you get a person who's that rude - I mean, they're gonna kill you. So like, if you give them a quick - short, sharp, shock - they don't do it again. Dig it? I mean, he got off lightly 'cos I could've given him a thrashing - I only hit him once! Hahahahahahaaaaaaaa [manic laughter]

RW: Right. Now another thing that we're interested in, 'cos again there's a track on the album that's supposed to be about it, is pegging out.

RTH: [Strange noise / exclamation] Cor... evil bastard!

RW: How do you feel about that? Are you frightened of it?

RTH: Death? Wow. What is it man - you tell me? I dunno. I once had my head read, and by that, this chick that was into astrology, I gave her my date of birth and everything - can you dig that? And she like told me where all my energy was channelled, and she said one of them was "experiences". So like when I come across death it'll be a new trip won't it? So like, I wouldn't have had it before, so it'll be alright. Hahahahahahaaaaaa [more manic laughter] Doesn't bother me in the slightest. Live for today, gone tomorrow. That's me. Yeah - don't worry about it. Never have done. Sommink new, innit?!

RW: Do you think you ever will - I mean, when you're a bit closer to it?

RTH: Nah, nah - well, it's one of them things that never goes out of fashion, innit? Hahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa [even more crazed laughter]

http://www.brain-damage.co.uk/interviews/pfcap3.html

Part 4; Capital Radio, London, 7th January 1977.
The following is one part of the legendary Capital Radio Pink Floyd Story - the history of the band, told by the band themselves in a set of interviews undertaken in 1976, and broadcast at the end of 1976/start of 1977. This transcription done by Matt Johns, Brain Damage - please seek permission from us before using elsewhere.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The programme presenter was Nicky Horne. Abbreviations used as follows:
NM: Nick Mason, RW: Roger Waters, DG: David Gilmour, RWr: Rick Wright
NH: Nicky Horne, INT1 - INT7: Interviewees 1-7


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NM: The thing about DSOTM is that, I think when it was finished everyone felt it was the best thing we've done to date, and everyone was very pleased with it, but there's no way that anyone felt it was five times as good as Meddle, or eight times as good as Atom Heart Mother, or the sort of figures that it in fact sold. So, I mean, DSOTM was something of a phenomena, and was about not only being a good album - 'cos I think it was a good album - but also about being in the right place at the right time.

This is the same really as talking about the launching of the band, that it was an idea that people responded to... well, I THINK people responded to the idea, it's quite often surprising how many people don't see what it's about! But the interesting thing... the thing one would never know is whether it would've been a successful album 18 months later, or 18 months earlier.

RWr: We approached that album, I would say, in exactly the same way as any other album we've done. Except that this album was a concept album. It was about madness, it was about one's fear, it was about the business - whereas none of the other albums had been like that. They may have been musically tied together, but there hadn't been a theme like that running from... on both sides. And when I suppose you're doing that you have to approach it in a concise way; if song A is somehow gotta be connected to the song on the end of the second side 'cos it is a concept album, then you do keep referring back and forwards. In that way, it was done like that, yeah. But in terms of playing it wasn't any different I can remember.

RW: It had to be quick, 'cos we had a tour starting and I can remember - somebody else would be able to tell you what the time was much better - but I have an idea in my head that maybe it was only 6 weeks or something from starting to write the lyrics to when we had to have something to perform on stage. I'm not sure though - I may be completely wrong - it might've been 18 months, and my memory for those kinds of facts is very, very poor. I can't remember. One of them had been done before... and "Brain Damage" was a song I'd written a long time before. And some of it didn't get written until after we'd been on the road for a while... the end - all that you touch, and all that you see, all that - didn't get written until after we'd performed it several times. It seemed to NEED something at the end.

NH: You might remember in the last episode of The Pink Floyd Story an interview recorded by the Floyd themselves. It was one of a series they did during the recording of DSOTM. Roger Waters explains why it was done:

RW: I liked the device of writing out a series of questions on cards, so that it was a series but the people who were answering them didn't know what the next one was going to be, so they HAD to answer them in sequence. In that way you could make them respond to stuff. And as you say, we did about... 20 people.

NH: Here's the section of the Floyd interviews on "Us And Them". Remember the interviewees all have cards with questions printed on them. And in this section the questions were, in order:

When did you last thump someone? Do you think you were in the right? And do you still think you were in the right?
The first replies on this tape are from the Floyd's road crew and the EMI engineer, and the last two replies are from Henry McCullough and his wife. One point to remember is that all the interviews were conducted individually, and no one interviewee knew what the other said:

INT1: When did I last thump someone? Erm... quite a long time ago actually, probably when I was at school but I don't think I hit them very hard. So it doesn't really matter. I was definately in the right. Why? 'Cos the person that I thumped was definately in the wrong.

INT2: Saturday in Paris was the last time I thumped somebody, when I smacked Chris Mickey straight in the breather.

INT3: I was... about 14, and it was in the changing room at school, and somebody pinched my gym shoes which I wasn't very pleased about and I gave him a punch on the nose. Hmm... I didn't get hit back incidentally. Oh, I think I was in the right - he had no reason to do that to me...

INT4: New Years Eve. Drank too much Guinness.

INT5: New Years Eve. [laughs] Yes, I did hit this guy, and I thought I was in the right 'cos I'd just been thumped, so I thumped back.

NM: Yeah - "Us And Them" which in fact was written for "Zabriskie Point" years before DSOTM and it was known as "Violent Sequence" for a long time. It was a terrific film, a lot of news stuff of cops and students fighting it out, all with no soundtrack apart from music, and just this very lyrical ballad thing, which Rick played as his solo. And "Zabriskie Point" never used it. Antonioni cut it out and consequently when DSOTM came up there was this section to be filled up and that was used as the basis for that song. Certainly it existed long before we ever talked about it.

NH: In the interviews that the Floyd recorded down at Abbey Road, the final question they asked was: what does the dark side of the moon mean to you?

INT1: This is a heavy one - sounds good but I've never been into it.

INT3: Dark side of the moon must be about the side of the moon that the sun isn't shining on, I suppose when it's in the Earth's shadow.

INT4: [laughs] This is definately a prying question, this last one! What do I think the dark side of the moon is like? [distant voice: "Is about"] I know - I can read. Hmm... I dunno actually. I think you've got me stumped to a certain degree on that. Hmm... I don't really know on that one - I'll definately have to leave that last one I think.

INT6: Ah, this is something I've wondered about... it seems to me that there's so much in it anyway it only seems to relate to what it's actually all about at the end. You've got... erm... but where the actual dark side of the moon comes into it I'm not sure about at all. I've thought about it but... not very hard really.

INT5: Well, to me dark side of the moon just taking it as it stands, just means whatever's out there in the universe. Could be anything. Exciting if anything.

INT7: Basically dark side of the moon is about making money - as to whether it's a complaint against making money, or people having too much money I don't know. Basically, just to make money.

NH: Dave Gilmour on that barrier:

DG: It does - there's not a lot you can do about it as the Pink Floyd. I mean there are things you can do about it individually, if one was to go out and do something on one's own, one can lose all that quite easily, that barrier... but I mean that barrier builds up... with success. I don't think running tiny halls is really gonna change that.

RW: DSOTM was a very important point because at that point all our ambitions were realised you see. When you're 15 and you think right I'm gonna start a group and I'm gonna this and that, the pinnacle that you can see, apart from very vague thoughts about rather smart bachelor flats, and not having to get up 'til four in the afternoon and things like that - speaking for myself anyway - I had all kinds of weird fantasies, but the pinnacle is the BIG ALBUM - going to number one. And once you've done that, a lot of your ambition has been achieved - particularly if it goes on selling like DSOTM did - it becomes one of THE albums of the last 20 years. And then you're faced with... you realise that it does feel wonderful for a month or something and then you start coping with what you knew to be true anyway, because you've been going for so many years before it actually happened. You KNOW anyway that it's not going to make any difference really to how you feel about it, and that it doesn't work - it doesn't really change you. If you're a happy person, you were before and you will be afterwards, and if you're not, you weren't, before, and you will be afterwards. And that kind of thing doesn't make a blind bit of difference to how you feel about anything. But even though you know that you still... it still takes you a long time to assimilate it really, after the real event, even though you're fairly sure that's how everything's gonna be.

- At this point a section is devoted to the mayhem backstage at a Floyd gig. Recorded at Detroit Olympia Stadium, 23rd June 1973, it records the lighting controller relaying instructions to the light crew. Despite interesting listening, it has been omitted here as it wouldn't make interesting reading...

http://www.brain-damage.co.uk/interviews/pfcap4.html