![]() He and Waters were already writing music for a scientific documentary called The Body. Still, Geesin was the obvious choice to compose the score. 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. “I think it’s significant that they all fell asleep,” he grumbled. Geesin also preferred opera to most rock’n’roll, and he took Mason, Gilmour and keyboard player Rick Wright to hear Wagner’s Parsifal at Covent Garden. “I called it ‘astral wanderings’,” he said. And when he did hear some, he wasn’t impressed. Geesin wasn’t familiar with Floyd’s music. Nick Mason met Geesin through a mutual friend, the Rolling Stones’ tour manager Sam Jonas Cutler. By 1970 he was composing TV soundtracks in his basement flat/studio in Notting Hill. Geesin had started his career in a jazz band in the early 60s. But first they needed someone to write a score.Įnter Ron Geesin, an Ayrshire-born banjo player, pianist, poet and writer. ![]() Pink Floyd eventually decided that the missing ‘something’ was an orchestra and a choir. “But it still seemed to lack an essential something.” ![]() “We added, subtracted and multiplied the elements,” said Mason. “It demanded the full range of our limited musicianship,” said Mason in his memoir, Inside Out.įloyd had been playing the piece live for some weeks, tweaking the arrangement. The company insisted this tape was not to be spliced and used for edits, meaning Waters and Mason recorded the backing track for their new composition in one 23.44-minute take. EMI had just installed state-of-the-art eight-track recorders that used a specific one-inch tape. Instead, Pink Floyd entered EMI’s Abbey Road studios in early March to record their new work. “It’s rather Yellow Submarine-ish, about a little boy in space.”īut Waters never mentioned Rollo again. “We’re going to do the music for an Alan Aldridge TV cartoon series called Rollo,” Waters announced in Melody Maker. But they were still undecided on their next recording project. It’s believed Pink Floyd performed the first version of their new instrumental on Januat the Lawns Centre in Hull. Pink Floyd live in Hyde Park on J(Image credit: Michael Putland/ Getty Images) “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.” “Dave came up with the original riff,” Waters told Capital Radio (now TeamRock) DJ Nicky Horne. However, Floyd’s discarded outtakes contained a musical sequence around which the Atom Heart Mother suite would evolve. The soundtrack included just three Floyd tracks, padded out with songs by the Grateful Dead, among others. Zabriskie Point appeared in February 1970 and was a resounding flop. It was hell.”įloyd lasted two weeks in Rome and then came home. However, the director, worried their music would overpower his movie, criticised everything: “You’d change whatever was wrong and he’d still be unhappy. “We did some great stuff,” insisted Waters. Zabriskie Point was the next stage on Floyd’s varied musical journey, but the band quickly discovered that Antonioni was an impossible taskmaster. The piece was fashioned out of found sounds, with its composer ranting in a Scottish accent. But, as a whole it’s awful schmaltzy and a little vapid.Pink Floyd in 1971 (Image credit: Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty Images)įloyd’s next release, 1969’s double album Ummagumma, included Roger Waters’ musique concrète experiment, Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In a Cave And Grooving With A Pict. And, there are sounds that draw pictures. As Impressionism, it’s occasionally effective, but on a very imitative level. It turns out to be an Impressionist orchestral sketch of (I think) a morning that includes some rock elements. The best that can be said for it is that it’s craftsman-like and that in spite of its many parts, it’s an entity. They use orchestral elements and a choir. Their last album, Ummagumma, while a bit drawn-out, had all their best elements.Ītom Heart Mother is a step headlong into the last century and a dissipation of their collective talents, which are considerable. Pink Floyd used sounds no one else thought of and could make them lyrical besides. Most other groups, when they thought in terms of electronics, thought only of painful feedback. And their music, if it wasn’t memorable, reached into the limits of their experimentation. Their use of a third, rear, sound source anticipated quadraphonics. Their work in the electronic capabilities of rock was more advanced than most people recognize. At one time, Pink Floyd was far-out, freaky even.
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