Between The Wheels

Like The Who and The Rolling Stones, Floyd are a band I've always liked, but I've never heard some of their albums. Actually I'm a lot more of a devotee of their classic period than I am of either of the other two bands.

So I thought I'd have a journey through their studio albums. I'm not going to do the post-Waters material, I consider them to be Pink Floyd records in name only. I've heard the first two of them. No wish to do that again.

So yesterday I had a listen to:

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn [August 1967]

I can't say I greatly enjoyed this. I like the mood, the atmosphere. It must have seemed exciting and other-worldly in the Summer of Love. The album mostly washed over me quite pleasantly, but it was never really engaging or involving.

I did really like Syd's spiky electric guitar - it reminded me of '90s Indie, especially Blur. I've just read that Graham Coxon is a fan, which doesn't surprise me at all. I think Graham's vocal style (I have his solo album Happiness in Magazines) owes something to Syd as well.

It's a shame that Syd couldn't have written a few catchy songs like Arnold Layne or See Emily Play for this album. There is one, the closing tune Bike. But so much of this record is experimental and improvised that it just didn't really grab me. It's very much of its time. It has bucketfuls of that very 1960s English whimsy and it sounds extremely dated, though that's part of its charm. Probably sounds great if you're off your head on LSD, but I wasn't.

Oh I like this one.
I never 'got' the Syd Barrett period to be honest. I will give it a go one of these days (see what I did there).

I have to say I do like the Gilmour era, and I know I am one of the few probably. For some reason they just clicked, have always been especially enamoured with the first live in from that period, A Delicate Sound of Thunder.

Anyway, looking forward diving into the pre Meddle albums, I have never really given them a chance.

I love Piper, could well be my favourite Floyd album. I think it's the bucketfuls of English whimsy.
Never been off my head on LSD either.

I never got the Syd era stuff either.. in saying that never got the pre Meddle stuff either .. most of it is utter wankery

A Saucerful of Secrets [June 1968]

A transitional album with contributions from both Barrett and Gilmour (they were in the band at the same time for a brief period).

This one seems to be a lot more focussed and coherent than Piper, until you get to the title piece. The first four tunes feel like proper compositions. Of these I was only familiar with Set The Controls which is something of an early Floyd classic. I remember seeing a concert performance of this on some music documentary in the '70s and being quite impressed.

The first two (Let There Be More Light and Remember a Day) are nothing special, but they're definitely proper songs. The fourth, Corporal Clegg is an intriguing little psychedelic curio, very much of its time and extremely Beatles-sounding. It's a sort of Concentrated Essence of Sergeant Pepper. But they do a much better job of it than the Stones managed on Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Then we get to the title piece which is, I suppose an early prog epic, supposedly in four parts over twelve minutes - but I found it to be more of the same meandering, experimental, improvised fare that Piper is largely composed of. I will say though that it's very atmospheric; it does set a certain mood very effectively. I can see why they were approached to do soundtracks.

There follows a slightly ethereal tune written and sung by Wright called See-Saw. I quite liked it. Reminded me a little bit of Echoes. And finally the only Syd tune on here, Jugband Blues. It has a very catchy chorus contrasted with some decidedly unfocussed, eerie brass band randomness. It seems, lyrically as well as compositionally, to reflect Syd's deteriorating mental state and I found it quite affecting.

Anyway - on the whole a bit more interesting than the debut effort I thought, but I can't see myself returning to it often.

A Saucerful of Secrets is a definite step down from Piper doesn't hang together as well and Water's whimsical attempt with Corporal Clegg doesn't hit the spot.

On Jugband Blues Syd wanted a Salvation Army band to play randomly along which he didn't quite get. Ostensibly about Syd being in Pink Floyd at the point where he wasn't.

Nick Mason's saucerful of secrets did: Remember a Day, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and A Saucerful of Secrets on their latest tour :)

More [June 1969]

Interesting one. I'm sure it makes more sense in the context of the film for which it was conceived as a soundtrack and I did consider watching it first. But it looks to be exactly the sort of modest budget '60s art film that I don't really have the attention span for, so I didn't.

Inevitably, the album is a bit of a hotch-potch. Some of the pieces are incidental music; background music by design and a bit tenuous. Some of them though are properly coherent songs with vocals. There are even a couple of sturdy rockers, The Nile Song and Ibiza Bar. Possibly intended to be heard emanating from a radio or a record player in the film rather than being mood-setting incidental music.

There are some wispy folky songs as well.

I wasn't fond of any of these tunes really except for Cymbaline, written by Waters, a catchy, spirited and slighly cynical piece. Hawkwind covered it and I've just had a listen - the Floyd version is better.

I quite liked a sultry blues instrumental called More Blues. Gilmour's blues vocabulary is a bit limited but he does have a nice feel for the genre, ditto Waters and Mason.

And I was impressed by the atmospheric incidental pieces; I can imagine that they set a tense mood in the film although they don't really work as standalone music, for me anyway.

For some reason Gilmour performs all the vocals on the record where present.

To what extent this is really a Floyd album I'm not sure and given its purpose it's not really fair to compare it to their usual album fare, but some of these tunes did get played live over the following couple of years.

Not a bad effort but of its time and a decidedly mixed bag.

Aye, bit of a mixed bag, but worth it for the Floyd goes METAL The Nile Song. Guy Pratt's been trying to get Gilmour to play it live, miserable old sod says "NO!". Happily Nick Mason he say "YES!" his Saucerful of Secrets also wheel out Green is the Colour

Ummagumma [November 1969]

Really quite a strange one. A double album originally, and definitely a game of two halves.

The first half is a live record, and pretty much what you'd expect at this point in their career. More of the same trippy, atmospheric, low key overindulgence. More about the sounds and the mood they were getting out of their instruments. Compositionally very insubstantial, empty even, and to me not very interesting at all.

They do though perform these pieces very competently in a live setting.

The second half of the album is a set of solo efforts conceived by each member of the band without involvement from the others.

Wright's piece, Sysyphus consists firstly of what sounds like a soundtrack clip from a budget horror film, secondly of Stockhausen-style avant-garde grand piano wankery, thirdly a bit of tense background music with piano stabs and percussion and fourthly what sounds like incidental music for a hippy sci-fi film, very soft and ethereal, but interspersed with dramatic, crashing church organ music. At least there's only thirteen minutes of it, even if it feels more like half an hour.

Waters contributes two pieces. The first is a pleasant, gentle, folky acoustic piece with the sound birds tweeting softly in the background. It's overlong at more than seven minutes, but at least it's a song. Simple and bland, but it's a song.

Waters' second piece is an arty sound collage, reminiscent of The Beatles' Revolution 9 and irritatingly entitled Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict. There are looped ambient noises and voice clips. Animal noises. Roger offers us a few spoken words in a highly exaggerated Scottish accent. It's not music but actually I quite liked it.

Gilmour contributes a piece called The Narrow Way in three parts. The first is just a pleasantly and competently strummed acoustic piece for two guitars with some sound effects and a bit of ambient slide guitar. He plays nicely but again musically it's very thin gruel.

The second part is more interesting, built round a proper heavy guitar riff with a bit of percussion in the background. It descends into the usual Floyd chaotic noise. It does at least feel like progressive rock, but in the end it's only a repeated riff with a production job, and there's less than three minutes of it.

But the guitar player delivers on the third part - it has his trademark gently emotive, breathy, mellow vocal and falsetto harmony. And - get this - it sounds a bit like classic Pink Floyd! It also sounds an awful lot like late '60s Beatles, complete with Ringo drum fills, purposeful Macca-style bass, dramatic descending chords .. apart from the vocal, it could almost be an outtake from Magical Mystery Tour. Extraordinary.

Mason's offering, The Grand Vizier's Garden Party, is probably the worst of all four. There's a bit of pleasant, faintly mediaeval-ish flute but mostly it's built around reverb-effected percussion and space noise. Once again it sounds like it might work - at a pinch - as soundtrack material but would anyone really want to settle down in a comfy chair with a set of headphones on and sit through this?

Overall - Ummagumma has its moments. Or at least, it has one moment. But mostly it's the worst excesses of '70s pretentious self-indulgence writ large.

More than anything it's baffling. Why, at this stage of your career when you still have something to prove, and having just made a soundtrack album, wouldn't you try to make a focussed, coherent, musical statement? I could never have imagined, as a casual listener in 1969, that this band would go on to make some of the most memorable, transcendent, universally appealing rock music of the 20th century.

Still - glad I got round to listening to it. I remember being very intrigued as a teenager by the cover artwork, as featured in my old NME Encyclopedia Of Rock.

Atom Heart Mother [October 1970]

Roger Waters regards Atom Heart Mother as "a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again".

Sorry Rog, I did have a listen. And while I can see where you're coming from, I don't think it's that bad. Well not quite, anyway.

The first part of this record is an old-fashioned Side One twenty-ish minute "epic". I'd never heard this before but I really quited like it. It's slow, it's a bit meandering, but it has some really nice musical ideas. It's something like a prototype Echoes. You can definitely hear signs of the classic Floyd starting to emerge. It's not great but it's coherent, it holds onto the musical theme and sustains it. I especially loved the brass section intro, with a sort of mediaeval fanfare feel.

But Side Two, as it would have been in those quaint old days when due to the technological limitations of the time, people had to listen to vinyl, does let the, er, side down a bit. Well, quite a lot. Waters' If is another dreary folky acoustic guitar piece backed up by a bit of keyboard and understated slide guitar. Just boring.

Wright's Summer '68 is a nice, Beatlesy, keyboard-dominated song with horns and additional vocals by Gilmour (I think. Maybe it's Rick). Quite liked it. Definitely a proper song.

I liked Gilmour's Fat Old Sun as well. It's a bit low key. Very Beatlesy, yet again. It's clear by now that Floyd simply wouldn't have existed if the Fab Four hadn't, but I think I already knew that. I was especially taken by how McCartney-esque the bass line was, and it seems that Gilmour played it himself.

But we end on the awful - just awful - Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast. Pretentious bollocks, with wanky instrumental sections further ruined by the sounds of people talking and eating their breakfast. Honestly I actually became angry and resentful while listening to it. Later on in the piece there's quite a nice progressive instrumental section that reminded me, slightly, of George Martin's Theme One, as covered by Van der Graaf Generator. But why is the whole piece thirteen minutes long? The other Side Two tunes amount to a bit more than fifteen minutes, there's just no need for it. They must have been high.

So there it is, not a great album and at the moment I'm not sure why they had an enthusiastic following at this stage.

Meddle [November 1971]

Now we're talking. Finally, the Floyd deliver.

I've owned this album since I was a teenager and I played it often back in the day. It's all about two of the pieces, for me - the first tune and the side-long epic on the flip side - but the remaining four aren't bad at all.

From the opening minute of One Of These Days it's clear that the band has raised its game pretty dramatically. Although it has more than a trace of the experimental / electronic noise Floyd, it drives along with a power, a purpose and an immediacy completely lacking from their earlier psychedelic sound collages. I hadn't heard it for years and it was a joy to listen to it again. It's aged nicely. It works.

As for the rest of the first side tunes - I don't really think there's anything special here but they all feel a bit more focused than the fillers on the previous few records. A Pillow of Winds is essentially an acoustic piece, a bit like Waters' earlier efforts from Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother but it has a bit more intensity, a nice production job, a nice mellow vocal from Gilmour (unless it's Wright) and what sounds like a fretless bass. Quite nice. Fearless is an odd one, a bit repetitive and dull. It somehow combines an electric blues feel with a mellow, ethereal mood. Not dissimilar from the previous tune in some ways. It ends with the Kop singing You'll Never Walk Alone - why?

I really like San Tropez. Bouncy, jazzy pop music. Fun. It has a nice Waters vocal and a simple but clever chord structure. Roger strums his acoustic very pleasantly, David adds a bit of tasteful slide guitar. Nice nice.

Seamus feels a bit like a throwaway effort. It's an old-time acoustic blues with a dog yelping in the background. It passes pleasantly enough.

But Echoes - a side long 'epic' in the time-honoured progressive rock tradition - is surely the album's piece de resistance. A dreamy soundscape, with beautiful use of harmony and melody. It's really immersive, it's a fair bit more powerful, dramatic and focussed than the Atom Heart Mother piece and it makes lovely use of light and shade to build tension. Always loved it though I have to own up again and admit that I hadn't listened to it for years.

Listening to it again, I wonder if the 'spooky' section with the unsettling, echoey howling wind ambient noise isn't perhaps a bit overlong? It does build tension and unease before the powerful instrumentation and the main theme come crashing back in, but in what's already a pretty long piece, maybe three minutes of it would have done.

But that's a nitpick really. Here's another one: they should have called the album Echoes to give it a bit more weight and significance. Like Close to the Edge, Hemispheres, 2112.

Anyway whatever the title it's a huge step forward. This is where the real deal Floyd starts, in my view - even though they're still dabbling with different styles.

Obscured By Clouds [June 1972]

This album is an enigma to me. It was recorded between Meddle and Dark Side Of The Moon, albums I owned and played repeatedly in my late teens - and yet I don't remember it being on my radar at all. I must have been at least dimly aware of it, because it gets a mention in the NME Encyclopedia Of Rock. And yet I never aspired to own it at all.

Did I encounter it while browsing through the LP sleeves in one of Hartlepool's record shops, and overlook it - perhaps because I knew it to be a soundtrack album? Or perhaps none of them ever stocked it.

I don't know, but in any case I'd never heard it until Thursday. And it's not bad at all.

Once again the question of whether it's a proper Pink Floyd album arises. The band had already started working on Dark Side Of The Moon when they recorded this over the space of a few weeks in the spring of 1972 so it's fair to say that Obscured By Clouds is really something of a low key (possibly even low effort) side project. Waters is said to have asked for the cover artwork to be dull and boring because Dark Side would have to compete with it.

Still, it was released as a Pink Floyd album - and ironically, by one account anyway, it's the album that broke them in America after Free Four was a radio hit.

I must admit I was a little troubed by the first couple of tracks, which are both in essence single chord drones with a bit of instrumentation over them. I thought I was in for a long forty minutes. But the rest of the tunes - excepting the last one, Absolutely Curtains which is a bit of a sound collage throwback - are concise, simple, accessible lightweight rock music with the usual Floyd touches. Nothing exceptional here, but quite a lot to like. Nice moments, lots of light and shade.

I especially like (the aforementioned) Free Four, written and sung by Waters. Beautifully astringent. It seems mostly to be about old age and impending death, despite bouncing along in an uptempo manner. Nicely juxtaposed.

The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime.
You shuffle in gloom of the sickroom
And talk to yourself as you die.

Life is a short, warm moment
And death is a long cold rest.
You get your chance to try in the twinkling of an eye,
Eighty years, with luck, or even less.

I find it a little troubling that Rog was predisposed to thinking about this in his late twenties. I hate to think how he feels about it now he's had his eighty years.

I was quite surprised to find what sounds uncannily like a Who tune, power chord patterns and clipped guitar licks included. The Gold It's In The ...

And I liked Wot's... Uh The Deal. Sounds a lot like a George Harrison tune from one of the later Beatles albums.

Anyway - I expect I'll forget about it now I've had a listen but it's really thoroughly decent. I like it a lot more than the overlong pretentious wank on the first few albums, anyway.

The Dark Side of the Moon [March 1973]

Well - in a way, anything I could type here would be superfluous because anyone likely to read this will have heard Floyd's signature record and formed their own opinion long ago, I suspect.

But anyway: this is the Floyd's big moment. It's light years ahead of anything in their catalogue prior to March 1973 and I don't think any of the music they released in its wake comes close either. The stars align, everything comes together in one glorious moment in musical history and they catch lightning in a bottle.

Like pretty much every other music lover of roughly my age, I owned this album as a teenager. I bought it in 1979, and I had the poster that came with it on my wall. When I was first a student that year, at least three of the other rooms in the house I shared with 20 other students had the same poster affixed to the wallpaper as well, and the record could often be heard radiating from the various record players dotted around the building. It was still massive six years after it was released. Little wonder it spent thirteen years on the charts.


In a sort of homage to the way I consumed music as a precious and intense teenager, I listened to Dark Side of The Moon today in a darkened room, with headphones. I closed my eyes and immersed myself in it completely. Whether because I have better equipment, an older perspective or a more mature appreciation of music now, I somehow experienced it differently; perhaps in a deeper way.

When I listened to it today it felt more like an opera, a single piece - as though that subdued, insistent heartbeat that opens the album subliminally runs all the way through it. It flows beautifully, and although it's thematically linked rather than having an overt story narrative, somehow it captures that sense of a beginning, middle and end even better than (say) Tommy does, for me anyway. Listening to it today through my Grados, it really felt like high art. I was captivated.

It's sometimes argued that Floyd were prog, but certainly I don't think Dark Side Of The Moon is. They took their cues from popular music; some of these tunes would work for Sinatra or Petula Clark. No wigging out with bonkers time signatures or pretentious instrumental complexity, or anything like that. But they really raised their game in every department - the songs are extraordinarily powerful, the instrumentation atmospheric, dramatic and lush with not a note out of place and the melodies and harmonies are amazing.

There is, arguably, one piece that calls to mind the old experimental Floyd - On The Run of course. But it works so well as a tense transition between Breathe and Time that it doesn't outstay its welcome for a second.

It's recorded and produced beautifully and the touches added by other musicians enhance it very nicely. Clare Torry's astonishing vocal (as a kid I always thought she was a black woman); the sax on Us and Them (Richard Parry). The other backing singers. The snatches of recorded voices. The spatial effects, the cash registers, the clocks. And it all builds to a perfect crescendo in Eclipse.

Miles Davis even makes it onto the album, by proxy. Rick Wright was a fan and he puts to good use an augmented dominant chord change stolen from Miles in Breathe. Actually I think Rick's contribution to Floyd is underappreciated sometimes; his modal jazz sensibilities make their presence felt on other Floyd material as well.

Anyway. A very powerful, hugely affecting record and one of those rare cases where uncompromised art meets mass appeal. It's just brilliant.

Wish You Were Here [September 1975]

Another one that I bought in my teens, but I don't think I played it right the way through more than a handful of times. It feels like a bit of a let-down after Dark Side, though taken on its own merits, it's not a bad album.

I always loved Shine On You Crazy Diamond in both parts albeit with a critical misgiving (see below), but more often than not I'd lift the stylus after Part One, and put the record back in its sleeve. It's a beautful, haunting, evocative, powerful song. There aren't as many ideas in it as you might expect from a piece that's more than 25 minutes long in total, but for me certainly, the basic musical idea is enough to sustain the 13 minutes of the first part. Good stuff.

Welcome To The Machine is just a dirge, to me. Boring. And there's more than 7 minutes of it.

Have A Cigar is fine. Decent song, nicely played, nice vocal from Roy Harper. I had no idea it wasn't Roger Waters until a few years ago. It's as though Roy is trying to evoke Roger's style, and perhaps he is. The lyrics carry a cynical message about the music business. There's a hint of funk. But ultimately it's pretty ordinary.

And on to Wish You Were Here. Lovely song. The sound of someone picking an acoustic along to the radio was very relatable, when I first had the album. Simple really, and mostly based on a simple acoustic rhythm part. It rolls along nicely.

Finally, a 12 minute reprise of Shine On. It's basically the same tune as the first part. It feels a bit stretched out. It does add some hip jazz chords about six minutes in (courtesy of Rick Wright of course) and it somehow devolves into a sort of laid back but disciplined funk jam. But underneath it's the same basic tune as Part One. Definitely a masterstroke to split it into two parts arranged at opposite ends of the album, because as a single 25 minute piece it would be ridiculously overextended.

So: a big anti-climax from Dark Side, but that was probably inevitable. I think I probably would have seen this record as a step forward from Meddle in the way the band gels, and in the sense that they'd found a polished, sophisticated sound. But to me Wish You Were Here is very short on ideas. A lot less ambitious than the signature record that preceded it. Dark Side must have taken a lot out of them creatively.

You are flying through these now  ;D  I must admit, I am woefully behind, but reading up so far I am not sure I've missed much. DSotM IS the big one, there are a couple more I like, I like WYWH actually, it suits the canon and - to me - sets the tone for Animals.

But first: DSotM. If there's one thing I can't stand about this record (and it's not the bands doing) it is the 'holy' attitude toward it. I listen to it - not a lot these days - and it is a sonic marvel. Still. It is the number 1 album to listen to when you get new equipment. A benchmark. And because of that, there are so many different (sounding) versions out there it makes my head spin. I much prefer a good old fashioned stereo mix (on my preferred medium), but there's 5.1, quadphonic (sp?), and what else you have. I have heard (and purchased much to my dismay) various versions, one sounding significantly worse than others. Other bands are like this a tiny bit. PF is traumatic when it comes to this one.

Alright, then. I like Meddle (love Seamus, what can I say? I am dog person) and even though I sort of understand what they tried with Echoes, I do find it a bit dragging on.

Animals [January 1977]

I briefly pondered buying this album a few times in my early 20s, while browsing the racks in Hartlepool's various record shops. But I didn't. I bought the 1994 CD remaster about twenty years ago and that's what I listened to today, for probably the third or fourth time.

In my previous piece in this modest thread I opined that Wish You Were Here is the overextended product of a band short of ideas. That's even more obviously true here. In fact a large proportion of the album (more than twenty-seven minutes of it, no less) is reworked from material that was considered for the previous album (Dogs and Sheep).

Apart from Dogs which was co-written with Gilmour, the entire album is written (and sung) by Waters. Rick Wright later claimed that Rog wouldn't let him write material for it - which does ring true, doesn't it? To be fair Gilmour was supposedly distracted by the arrival of his first born. I suspect that this is the point in the Pink Floyd story at which Roger's ego kicks in and he takes charge, so much so that he starts to think of the other three as his backing band. Personally I've always thought of him as the critical creative force in the band anyway but there's no doubt that Gilmour and Wright made important contributions to their best albums.

The album is bookended by two versions of a simple but effective acoustic ditty called Pigs On The Wing. Exactly the same tactic as the last album; the same tune offered twice at opposite ends of the record - but to be fair it's only about 85 seconds long, in both versions.

Dogs is just over seventeen minutes long; you might assume that it's an 'epic' in the grand tradition of Atom Heart Mother or Echoes, but it isn't. It's just a fairly straightfoward song, padded out with long and not-very-interesting subdued instrumental parts. I do like it, but I'd like it a lot more if it lasted for about six minutes. Very nice vocal by Gilmour, clever lyrics, lovely chord changes, nice guitar part.

Pigs is at least only eleven minutes long (ish) but it's a very ordinary tune that would struggle to sustain three minutes. Sheep I do quite like, albeit not a lot. There's just about enough variation and energy to justify its ten minute duration. I like Gilmour's shimmering broken chords toward the end.

I've always felt that there's something depressingly low-key about this album. I get that it's supposed to be "dark". The subject matter is supposed to reflect the grim sociopolitical conditions of mid '70s Britain, and as far as I can tell the animals represented by the various tunes are allegories of social classes, a bit like Animal Farm. But the production feels really flat. There does exist a 2018 remix that supposedly addresses this. I've never liked the tunes enough to bother with it. The bigger problem is that there are none of the irresistible melodies or sophisticated instrumental passages that the previous two albums had. A bit of the trademark wash of atmospheric synth or a few delicately plucked echoey guitar arpeggios might have improved the long tedious part in Dogs, for example.

Anyway - more positively, that cynical, astringent edge in Waters' vocal really starts to come to the fore on this album. I like that.

Glad I had a listen one more time, but there's nothing to draw me back to Animals. I can't see myself investing forty-one minutes in it again. It ought to be an EP, really. In truth there's about fifteen minutes of worthwhile music on the whole record. Maybe even less.

I like Animals, the long winding songs suit me. Not always, but I do return to this one a bit. The double guitar solo in Dogs is great, in fact Gilmours solos shine quite a bit on this album. I guess I am more a long form song guy than a short form. Always have been, long intros, extended solo parts - bring it on. Probably why this one resonates.
Dogs I like best, but really all three songs are great to me.

I enjoyed Shine On for the first few times I listened to it, but nowadays find it too repetitive.

Never understood why Roy Harper was brought in to sing Have A Cigar.  An outward sign of the power struggle between Waters and Gilmore. Perhaps they both wanted to sing it, couldn't agree in who would so they got a third party in.

Welcome to the Machine and Have A Cigar are essentially the same song

Overall WYWH is a drop in standard between the 2 albums either side of it

The Wall [November 1979]

I never much liked The Wall. I'd been listening to Dark Side Of The Moon a lot when it came out and it seemed singularly lacking in the aural qualities I'd come to expect from the Floyd: the atmospheric soundscape, the lush wash of keyboards, the soaring melodies. Instead it had a sort of brash immediacy that didn't appeal to me.

I'll never forget the first time I heard Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) which was the lead single from the album. It came on the radio in the kitchen I shared with 20 other students in a large house in Huddersfield. The pounding disco beat .. the kids' chorus. I couldn't believe it. And I didn't like it.

There was a sense, at that time, that the old guard had run out of steam at the very moment the New Wave had arrived to usurp them. Zeppelin and Yes had put out awful, tired, flaccid records. Genesis seemed to have gone a bit commercial and ordinary. And unfortunately, it seemed to me that Floyd had jumped the shark as well. I recall that a lot of rock fans felt the same way. I recall a conversation with one of the old rockers down the basement boozer I used to frequent in Hartlepool, just after the album came out. "All in all, Jim", he remarked, "I'm just another prick who bought The Wall".

Despite that, I did listen to, or at least hear this album dozens of times back then. My first girlfriend had a copy and she was fond of it. I did buy it myself eventually at some point early in the present century, but I've only played it a few times.

But I gave it a proper listen today and I must say I definitely got a new perspective on it. Firstly and most obviously, compared to the two albums which precede it and which are in my opinion woefully short of ideas and conspicuously padded out, this one definitely, emphatically isn't. Even at 81 minutes, it's absolutely chock-full of inspiration and ideas, both thematic and musical. Sure - some of the ideas are repeated but that's done to great effect, to maintain and reinforce the theme. Generally speaking the musical content is pretty diverse here, even though it all hangs together very nicely. It holds on to the sense of being a single coherent statement; a proper rock opera.

It's clear that Waters is completely in charge by now and this is definitely his own record. I think he's had a lot of help from Bob Ezrin to be fair, especially conceptually. But Waters is clearly possessed here of an idea and the need to express it. And my word, he certainly does express himself. I had forgotten about The Trial, which is a powerfully dark, extremely theatrical piece. His intense, dramatic vocal brings to mind Ron Moody prowling the boards on the West End. Lionel Bart would have been proud.

I did miss the old Floyd sound and mood but you can't really blame them, although I did at the time, for embracing a more modern feel. The chorus and echo effects in the rhythm guitar, the punchier, more rhythmic bass, for example. And it's a shame that I don't really have a lot to say about Rick Wright's contribution. There are keyboards all over the album of course but on the whole they aren't really distinctive. Accompaniment, really.

Like many another "double album" I'm sure, The Wall really benefits from the CD format, and not just for the audio quality. I'm sure that even if I'd liked the record back in the day, the irritation of having to flip a side or change a record three times would have spoiled the fun a bit. It obviously flows more nicely without the interruptions, which of course is just what you want for an album with a conceptual narrative like this.

Roger Waters is reported to have declared in 1992 that The Wall was "stupefyingly good" and you know what? I think he was right. But I still don't like it as much as Dark Side Of The Moon.

Here's a fun fact that I read a few months ago. Gilmour composed a guitar solo for Another Brick in the Wall but painted himself into a corner .. he couldn't work out a good way to get back into the verse. So Ezrin brought in Lee Ritenour, a renowned session player best known for smooth jazz, to coach him and show him how to finish off his solo. Rit also plays some rhythm guitar parts elsewhere on the album that Gilmour struggled with.

The Final Cut [March 1983]

Dark. That's the first word that comes to mind to describe this one. I never paid it much attention when it came out, although I did buy Roger's solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking when it emerged a year later. But I think that had something to do with Eric Clapton being on it. Eric was going through something of a renaissance at the time.

This album too is a Roger Waters solo album in all but name. It's his concept, he's written all the words and music himself and he sings the lead part on all of them as well (except that Gilmour has a co-lead vocal on Not Now John). These are really strong compositions, with a very sombre mood. Once again the album feels like a single statement that's supposed to flow in a particular order. It's not a rock opera per se but it does have a unifying theme and a loose narrative.

It doesn't sound like Pink Floyd at all until a typical Gilmour guitar solo kicks in during The Fletcher Memorial Home, which would have been the second track on Side Two back in the day. The (very effective) orchestration arguably plays a bigger musical part than the rest of the band.

So much so that when Gilmour's vocal cuts in during Not Now John it honestly feels a bit out of place. I remember that that one was the single off the album, and on Top Of The Pops. But the version that was broadcast to the nation had the words "fuck all that", which are repeated a few times, replaced by the title, ie "not now John". Although it's a tune that I like a lot the whole thing feels a bit odd in the context of the rest of the album, it's much more conventional rock. A bit jarring.

I can't remember what prompted me to buy this record, in the late '90s I think. I've always liked and respected it but it's what you might call a "demanding listen". It's just so intense, so wilfully bleak. Bordering on disturbing, at times. Roger puts so much cynical feeling and subdued anger into his vocal that it's almost a voyeuristic experience. It's as though he's trying to disturb you by baring his emotional wounds; by exposing his bitter resignation. It's certainly a heartfelt performance. The album is, of course, about his father's death at Anzio in 1943, and Roger's disappointment with the way the world turned out since then.

One thing I didn't know until recently - the fourth piece on the CD, When The Tigers Broke Free wasn't on the original vinyl release. Odd because it feels like a key moment on the record, probably the most personal piece of all of them.

I'm not keen on Roger's sentiments about Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands war. But apart from that this is a pretty special album. I'm not sure I could say that it's a fitting way to close out the Floyd's career given that it's not a Pink Floyd album in a meaningful sense, but it's definitely the end of the road for me. This is the last chapter in the canon.

I may listen to the later faux-Floyd albums out of curiosity. Probably not. I did buy the first one when it came out and still have the vinyl in the loft. But I can't honestly think of a good reason to upgrade it to FLAC or high-quality MP3.

It's been said that Floyd without Roger Waters is something like The Beatles without Lennon. In truth, it's more like The Beatles without Lennon and McCartney. Like George Harrison, Gilmour made some important, memorable contributions to his band and constituted a distinctive part of it. But he wasn't its creative essence (and certainly, Nick Mason wasn't either).

Paradoxically, The Division Bell is my favourite Pink Floyd album. It's actually one of my favourite all-time albums, so maybe I'm more of a Gilmour fan than a PF one.

Floyd lost all their bite and edge when Waters left. All very supine and limp wristed after.

The Final Cut is probably the bitiest and edgiest, certainly the lyrics.  I think it really doesn't deserve the panning it gets.

Nice review Slim!

Gilmour and Waters had some chemistry between them though.  I don't think either came anywhere near to creating anything as good when they were solo to what they managed as part of PF.

The ambition and execution of Waters live shows puts him ahead of Gilmour though.

I must say that the Final Cut is my least favourite Floyd album. Got it for my 20th Birthday. Worst birthday ever.

I suppose when your favourite Floyd album is the Psychedelic Whimsy of Piper, then the abject misery of a polemical Water's Floyd isn't going to float you punt. When I eventually got round to listening to the Watersless Floyd albums I found them a much more palatable echo of the Floydian past.

Always remember listening to the Saturday Rock show or whatever it was called then with Richard Skinner playing I think it was the first 2/3 tracks from side one then Two Suns in the Sunset then after playing saying something along the lines of . Well I hope that's cheered everybody up..

It's pretty grim listening tbh . With rehashed songs that weren't good enough for The Wall.. just more of moany old Rog banging on about the war.. his father etc etc

I doubt I'll ever listen to it ever again

Quote from: Fishy on September 27, 2024, 08:52:57 AMAlways remember listening to the Saturday Rock show or whatever it was called then with Richard Skinner playing I think it was the first 2/3 tracks from side one then Two Suns in the Sunset then after playing saying something along the lines of . Well I hope that's cheered everybody up..

It's pretty grim listening tbh . With rehashed songs that weren't good enough for The Wall.. just more of moany old Rog banging on about the war.. his father etc etc

I doubt I'll ever listen to it ever again

I'm on a Facebook group where we post what we are listening to and some guy, whenever playing any Roger Waters, just writes 'Dead dad klaxon'  ;D

I usually like darker albums, TFC is not my least favorite Floyd album, but like said it's really a Roger solo outing. Just like the subsequent efforts are Gilmour albums in all but name. I like those albums - I already mentioned that -  and Gilmour may have less to say, the way he packaged it appealed to me.

From Waters' solo albums I really enjoy Amused to Death for more than one reason. Beck's guitar on here is fantastic but also it's simply a demo record. Any new piece of kit I get I plat this album on just to hear what it can sound like.