Review of Pink Floyd's Meddle

Released 1971

"And no one sings me lullabyes
And no one makes me close my eyes
So I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky...."

One night in 1985, good old reliable BBC showed Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii. I'm pretty certain it's never enjoyed a terrestrial airing since, which is sad.

That was the first time I'd seen Pink Floyd perform any of their material, anywhere, so I was instantly fascinated and relieved that a band for which I'd built such a substantial pedestal didn't disappoint in the flesh, as it were.

The performances at Pompeii were so dramatically different in terms of the music itself, the visual presentation and the staging that any self respecting prog fan couldn't help but be impressed. When I learned that a number of the tracks performed that night were from Meddle, I wasted no time in setting out to find it.

Previously I had been reticent to go back beyond The Dark Side Of The Moon. I was aware of the success of The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and had some idea of the music, which didn't yet appeal to me, and, obviously wrongly I assumed all the band's earlier work would be of this ilk.

I loved the abstract nature of the sleeve: having no clear 'meaning', but yet it felt somehow linked to Echoes. The four greasy gangly sour faced youths peering out from the inner spread of the gate fold sleeve made me smile; the contrast between these scruffy urchins and the big-haired, mascara-laden pretty boys in the the charts at the time in the eighties, really was amusing.

One of These Days was a wonderful way to start the album, building from a howling wind sound-effect and sinister bass line, it gathered momentum like an avalanche, culminating in Nick Mason's one spoken line, furious guitar rushes and relentless drumming. I found myself with a stupid grin on my face, so pleased that this was at least as good as any of the other later albums.

Things settled down a bit for A Pillow of Winds. David Gilmour's lilting vocal, slide and acoustic guitar producing an overall effect not unlike the general mood of Wish You Were Here. The key difference though was - and this was true for the album as a whole - there was no concept or theme as such, underpinning the lyrics. This was a collection of individual songs, penned by individual band members show-casing their musical talents, without any recourse to an over-riding focus. The lyrics were simple, uncomplicated and untainted by the mania of Roger Waters.

Fearless maintained the mellow mood, although tinged with slightly psychedelic motifs, a hypnotically slow rhythm, all capped with the gradual introduction and eventual complete takeover by a rendition of Rodgers & Hammerstein's You'll Never Walk Alone, as sung by Liverpool FC's Kop. Mad, but it worked.

San Tropez caused a literal turning of the head. What was this? Roger Waters singing a warm and friendly ditty? Surely not. Could this be the same man who would scream with truly frightening existential angst into the microphone less than a decade later. The jazzy piano and brushes on the drums was so upbeat, that I could hardly believe this was a Pink Floyd song. On the first listen, I really wasn't sure what to make of it.

Having seen Seamus performed at Pompeii, I was prepared - just about - it's unfathomable nuttiness. Yet another musical style was employed; this time a blues track accompanied by a howling dog. Yes, it was a varied album, but was it smacked of a lack of direction.

Echoes of course will be the main reason that anyone would buy Meddle. A side long epic with the most significant contribution on the record by Rick Wright. Along with numerous and more obviously Floydian keyboard stylings, his shared vocal with David Gilmour on this track is one of prog rock's greatest moments.

Because I was so familiar with TDSOTM, I was thrilled to hear strong connections with the later album.

I was struck by how clearly this was a genuine team effort. All four members appeared to work as a cohesive unit with almost equal emphasis afforded to each of their respective contributions. Whereas Roger Waters would later dominate all aspects of the bands sound and finally allow David Gilmour but three brief solos on The Final Cut, here was a band sparking off each other, producing a space-rock jam, allowing each other vast areas of space in which to experiment.

As a headphones experience, Echoes is hard to match. I'm sure I wrecked my long term hearing by exposing myself to the repeating high pitched reverberating piano note played at unhealthy volumes over and over again several times over the years.

For me, the greatest part of the track is from about sixteen and a half minutes in with the dueting between Rick Wright and Nick Mason sounding at times not unlike Tubular Bells, climaxing with David Gilmours magnificently distorted guitar.

Over the years, like most Floyd fans, I've probably skipped from One of These Days to Echoes more times than I've played the album straight through. However, in recent years, I've come to appreciate the other tracks and therefore see the album as a whole in a stronger light. Okay, maybe not Seamus.

Review of Pink Floyd's Animals

Released 1977

"Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone's expendable and no-one had a real friend
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer."

Animals was a requested for Christmas present along with the 12" single of The Power Of Love. I was young, I was confused.

I sometimes wish that I'd had the sense to purchase Pink Floyd's albums in the order that they'd been released. As it was, I had leaped backwards and forwards through their discography with the consequence certain albums suffered. I'm sure that if I had bought The Wall before The Final Cut I'd have appreciated the former much more. Likewise, with the benefit of hindsight I feel that Animals would now rank higher in my estimation, if it had been the next Floyd album I had bought after Wish You Were Here.

Therefore, reading between the lines, it's fair to conclude that Animals is one of my least played Pink Floyd albums. Only Ummagumma ranks lower I'm afraid.

I really can't put my finger on why it has never had the same appeal for me as it I know it has for countless others. Indeed I know many, many others who would place it firmly in their top three Floyd albums.

Due to it's high regard amongst my contemporaries, on Christmas day 1984, I was positively moist with anticipation when we returned from the lunch time Christmas pint and I had an hour to kill before dinner.

I was aware of the infamous tale of the escaping flying inflatable pig during the photo-shoot for the album cover. Holding the 12" sleeve up close I wondered why they'd bothered of going to the trouble in the first place. Neither the outside photo or those inside the gate fold sleeve held any of the mystique of the packaging of, say, Wish You Were Here. I didn't get it.

The concept behind the album was plain enough, and obviously 'borrowed' in no small measure from George Orwell. This in itself was disappointing to me, as it remains the only instance of Roger Waters' creativity being reliant on the forethought of others.

Like Wish you Were Here and The Wall, Animals is effectively bookended by a prologue and epilogue, in this case Roger solo with an acoustic guitar.

The strongest part of Animals is the dark humour of Roger's lyrics. I think he remains hugely underrated as a lyricist and a political commentator. He is plainly someone you'd avoid if you were inclined to call the Samaritans, but there are, dare I say it, flashes of Dylanesque wordsmithery which, in years to come, will no doubt be integral to a University degree course.

As I have said previously in my review of The Wall, the juxtaposition of the voices of David Gilmour and Roger Waters is an undervalued aspect of the appeal of Pink Floyd. This is evident here, with the contrast between Roger's scathing spitting of the lyrics of Pigs On The Wing and David's lush and more melodic vocal in Dogs. It is impossible to imagine Roger singing Dogs: it just wouldn't work. That for me shows that, although subsequent events may appear to contradict this fact, Roger must have, at one time had enormous faith in the talent of his colleague, in that he could write specifically for him, knowing he couldn't possibly impart the same required emotion.

Contrast this with Pigs (Three Different Ones). This song needs Roger's angst to work. On my first listen in 1984, it was this song that made me frown and think that the balance between lyric / subject matter and instrumentation was all wrong. It was the first time that it was obvious that this was becoming Rogers band. It wasn't that the instrumentation was poor; obviously it wasn't, but it was subservient to the lyric. Yes, there were still some great guitar work: the solo in this song being the best on the album, but something was missing. I can see now that Richard Wright's influence on the album was minimal and the album suffered massively for it. Go back to The Dark Side Of The Moon or Wish You Were Here and remove Richard Wright's influence and you suddenly realise that, to a large extent, he was the glue that held the whole band together. He was, in effect, the soul of the band. And therein lies my continuing problem with Animals; it has no soul.

Sheep is, in my opinion, the strongest song on the album, being much more a band effort, cleverly constructed, using innovative technology on the vocals and is not half bad. So, why do I still sound negative? One; it's all too bitter and pointless and two; I felt cheated when I later recognised the guitar motif on the run out of the song being almost entirely replicated on David Gilmour's first solo album a year later.

Reading this back, I'm struck that, overall it appears that I have very little good to say about the album. This does bother me as it currently ranks eighth on the greatest prog album chart on Prog Archives. If other like minded individuals rank it so highly, I will continue to reconsider it and, who knows, one day I might see the light. Then again.

Review of Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons Of Hitch Hiking

Released 1984

"I nailed ducks to the wall; kept my heart in dark ruins. I built bungalows all over the hills. Dunroamin, duncarin, dunlivin Took my girl to the country, to sleep out under the moon Next thing she's going crazy".

I had owned The Final Cut for no more than three or four months before The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking was released. Compelled by the prospect of another chapter of tortured brilliance, I bought his first solo album proper (his Music from The Body with Ron Geesin, as I later learned, was made for the bargain bucket) on the day of release.

I have since seen this album listed close to the top of worst album covers of all time type polls. It really is irredeemably awful and quite surprising given the care and attention afforded to Pink Floyd album art. The other big negative is the dreadful song titles. Admittedly, the concept - a real time recounting of a dream or sequence of dreams - almost justifies it, but titles such as 4.37am (Arabs with Knives and West German Skies) all presented parenthetically struck me as unnecessarily daft.

As I was staying with my girlfriend the night I purchased the album from (another sadly defunct record shop in) Redruth, and she was of the Greenham Common, knitting her own yogurt brigade, she took umbrage at the 'degrading' photograph of the naked 'lady' hitch hiker on the cover, meaning I was not allowed to use her turntable that evening without incurring the risk of a serious strop, and the almost certain subsequent denial of certain privileges.

I crept downstairs in the early hours the following day, set on committing the cardinal sin of using her mothers ancient turntable. Spotting a set of headphones, I gleefully rejoiced that I could indulge my selfishness without disrupting the rest of the household.

As the gap between the releases of The Final Cut and this album was relatively short, and as the former album was, at the end of the day, a Roger Waters solo album in all but name, it seemed not unreasonable to expect more of the same. This time, Eric Clapton was in accompaniment along with a robust set of supporting players. I was never a big fan of Eric Clapton post Blind Faith, although as an undoubted master of his art whose style was markedly different to David Gilmour, this was an intriguing prospect.

There were several obvious parallels between this album and The Final Cut; each album had, in effect, an prologue, the main 'story', a commercial penultimate track which was issued as a single and an epilogue, the song structure of both of these epilogues was remarkably similar; both are vehicles first and foremost for the vocal, and both use sound-effects as integrally as any of the instruments. However, one feature which was wholly absent from The Final Cut, was a sense of humour, which I was surprised to find here. Admittedly it's application was usually of the warped schadenfreude affected variety, but it was there.

The album starts with a ticking clock, an explosion and the anguished cry from Roger, (no change there then) a female voice telling him that he's been dreaming, before Mr Clapton begins the slide guitar motif which varies very little for the rest of the album. Roger commences to provide a commentary of his dream about picking up female hitch hikers. The tone is hushed, liberally spiced with sexual innuendo and deliberately makes about as much sense as a dream. Female background vocals (including Cherry Vanilla?) serve to take the edge off of the pained Waters lead. It's all impeccably played, masterfully executed, and, as I'd already come to expect, magnificently produced; another perfect headphones album, but as it passed quite seamlessly from track to track, I couldn't see where it was going. Tales about nightmares are a long way removed from the themes of the three Pink Floyd albums I already owned. This was trivial and pointless as opposed to deep and meaningful, I suppose. This puzzled me.

Being dream-like, it leapt from scene to scene apparently at random, which was understandable, but because of this it had little focus.

The thinness of the music on The Final Cut reflected the funereal tone of the concept as a whole; lush orchestration wouldn't have worked. Here again, whilst often lyrically brilliant, the music itself has little imagination and, to use a non-technical term, was just too 'samey' throughout.

This was such a conundrum. My eighteen year old self was completely in awe of Roger Waters articulation and ability to conceptualise so effectively. but was frustrated by the lack of 'oomph' in the instrumentation.

Side two, for the most part, was a large improvement. The slide guitar motif continues, but there is a bit more depth in evidence. The entire arrangement for Go Fishing was beautifully realised; humour, tortured vocals, social comment, a liberal dosing of woman hating, a lilting keyboard theme, AA Milne's Winnie The Pooh being read to children whilst inhaling pot, and a great saxophone solo. What more could you want? The same can said of the title track; very well realised, ticking most of the necessary boxes.

Although throughout most of the second side I found myself enjoying the wordsmithing, admiring the cleverness of the segues between songs and the astonishing bitterness exuded by Roger, there are large meandering holes where a tune should reside.

A perplexing album this; flashes of sublime greatness interspersed with moments of utter uninspired drab ordinariness. I really wanted to love this as much The Final Cut. Unfortunately it ultimately left me wanting a great deal more.

Review of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here

Released 1975

"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
running over the same old ground. What have you found?
The same old fears. Wish you were here."

Most of my prog rock encounters to date had been happy accidents rather than planned ventures. I was usually attracted in these early days by either recognising the name of the band, the album or the sleeve as being 'prog-like'. That wasn't the case with my next purchase.

The Dark Side of The Moon had triggered my interest in the genre and I was still utterly under it's (softly spoken magic) spell. I had read anything and everything I could about Pink Floyd and was not far short of obsessive about my desire to learn more. I wanted to be sure that I wasn't setting myself up for a fall. It would have been easy; I held TDSOMT in such high esteem that it was almost inevitable that anything else would be a let down. I wasn't sufficiently intrigued by the earlier albums at that point and I didn't have the £20+ that a new copy of The Wall would have demanded. It seemed to make sense therefore to go for the next chronological release after TDSOTM. This was even though I knew that before the ultimate concept for Wish You Were Here was agreed, the band spent six months experimenting with music made bashing and strumming kitchen utensils.

It was with some trepidation that I entered the record store. I was lucky enough to find an original black cellophane wrapped copy with hardly a crease and with the robot hand-shake sticker in perfect condition. As with my previous Pink Floyd purchase, I was immediately impressed by the sense of drama created by the unstated mystery inherent in this 12" package. On the way home, I held the bag containing the album in the same way I now hold my baby son. I invested an inappropriate amount of significance in simply buying the record, looking furtively over my shoulder lest I needed to explain my shortness of breath.

Peeling away the layers at home, I noted that more care and consideration has gone into the concept of the packaging than would often be applied to the music by other bands. All of the images implied absence and duplicity: the clear record and blank face of the top-hatted gentleman showed an absence of sincerity, there was the diver entering the lake without raising a ripple and the incongruity of the transparent red scarf blowing through a copse. The main image - of one man aflame shaking hands with another - is both pregnant with symbolism and yet devoid of any tangible meaning. In its entirety it combined to a evoke a compellingly impersonal distancing aura.

From the very first notes this was an album characterised by a unique keyboard sound which was both crystal clear and mechanical in its execution, perfectly complementing a sound which felt as though it belonged to a distant future time, cold, inhuman and industrial.

There is a huge feeling of space, of incredible emptiness across the whole record. The deliriously slow stoned pace of Shine On You Crazy Diamond is so precisely and cautiously executed that there the anticipation between each note of the lengthy guitar introduction is almost too much to bear.

Carefully and sparingly used sound effects pulled me in on the very first listen. This instantly became one of my favourite headphone albums, especially with the lead into the title track, where a radio is tuned through several stations before an acoustic guitar takes over, first in mono before exploding with clarity in stereo. The best moment for me on the album is during this intro, where the 'squeaking' sound of David Gilmour's left hand moving between chords on the fretboard is the most tangibly non-mechanical element of the piece, and is so perfectly clear in the headphones, contextualising the desperate pleading sentiment of the lyrics that follow.

I hurriedly reached for one of my many Pink Floyd books during this first listen, remembering from somewhere that Stephane Grapelli had contributed violin to the beginning of the second section of Shine On You Crazy Diamond. To this day, I have only detected the vaguest grasp of his work on that day. Ever since it has been forever lost in the rolling winds and rising keyboards. I have searched for it time and time again, always glad that I can't quite find it.