Pink Floyd

A crowd of curious onlookers presses in front of the work, perhaps trying to grasp its ineffable, celebrated expression… No, this isn't the Mona Lisa in the halls of the Louvre, but an exhibition dedicated to rock and its icons — or rather, an exhibition entirely devoted to the wonders of Pink Floyd, in the citadel of music, right in Paris. And the star everyone comes to admire isn't the Mona Lisa, but the cow from "Atom Heart Mother", which boasts, for starters, a memorable cover — certainly one of the most powerful images in the entire history of rock music.

What is universally known as "the cow album" came out in October 1970, at the end of a period of feverish activity for the band. The four members of Pink Floyd seem gripped by an uncontrollable creative restlessness that occasionally leads them into ambitious projects with mixed, never fully convincing results. Among those never completed is the soundtrack for an animated film they worked on for a while in mid-1970. Among the at least partially rewarding ones is the soundtrack for "Zabriskie Point", on which they worked for a couple of weeks early in the year in Rome, under the direction of Michelangelo Antonioni — a grueling stretch of work for the band, frustrated by a director never fully satisfied with the results, to the point that, after the exhausting sessions, only three songs were used, one of which, featured in the famous villa explosion scene, is nothing but a reworking of the classic "Careful With That Axe, Eugene". To round off the picture of the band's recording activity in 1970, it's worth noting that Gilmour worked on the production of both albums by ex-Floyd member Syd Barrett: the first, "The Madcap Laughs", released early in the year, also co-produced by bassist Roger Waters; the second, "Barrett", released in December, which also featured keyboardist Rick Wright.

Pink Floyd's live activity was just as intense. It's worth recalling the date of January 23, 1970, when an embryonic form of the piece that would, over the following months, evolve into the suite "Atom Heart Mother" — the song that gives the album its title — was performed live for the first time in Paris. Initially presented under the name "The Amazing Pudding", the song found its final title quite by chance, when it was featured on John Peel's famous radio show. The inspiration came from newspapers of the day reporting on a pregnant woman being kept alive by an atomic pacemaker.

Initially, the song didn't include a section for orchestra and choir. The idea of giving the suite a symphonic form was also fairly accidental, coming to the group just before they left for their American tour in April. Irish composer Ron Geesin was brought in to work on the orchestrations, and the band handed him a demo featuring the rhythm track and basic keyboard and guitar lines. But until the band returned to London at the end of May, Geesin's work remained largely stalled, since the composer had received no clear direction on where to take the piece sonically. Recording sessions for the album, which began in late spring at Abbey Road Studios, were a fraught affair, both because of pressure from EMI (which had planned for the album's release before summer) and because of the band's genuine struggle to work with an orchestra and choir totaling about a hundred musicians. Wright was the only member of the group able to read a score, but his laid-back nature didn't help much in untangling the impasse.

In the years that followed, Ron Geesin revealed that he had worked almost entirely on his own on all the orchestrations, and that he himself, coming from a jazz background, had serious trouble directing the orchestral musicians, all top-tier professionals handpicked from among the best in England. It seems that, out of sheer exhaustion, the classical choir's own director, John Aldiss, eventually took charge to get the recording finished.

Stylistically, "Atom Heart Mother" is sometimes labeled as the album that marked the band's turn toward a progressive sound. While it's true that the suite format and the use of symphonic orchestrations are among the defining traits of progressive rock, it's equally true that the affinities between Pink Floyd and the genre, as we've come to define it through landmark bands like King Crimson, Genesis, Yes, and so on, pretty much end there. For one thing, by the band members' own account — surrounded in those years by an almost unbearable aura of being innovators at all costs — "Atom Heart Mother" represented a parenthesis, both the beginning and the end of an experiment driven largely by chance. What's more, Pink Floyd's tendency to stretch out song lengths long predates this album, going all the way back to their legendary performances at the UFO Club, when the band, led by Barrett, used a handful of rock-blues classics as a pretext for long "psychedelic" digressions.

The very songs on "Atom Heart Mother", which were meant to give the band a much longed-for, substantial refresh of their live setlists, were largely abandoned along the way before long. Only the title suite — despite all the difficulties involved in performing it live with choir and orchestra — and "Fat Old Sun", presented in gorgeous live versions with extended instrumental codas, stayed in the concert setlists for a while. A far luckier fate awaited songs like "Echoes" and "One Of These Days" (from the following year's album "Meddle", 1971), which, picking up the thread ideally laid down by 1968's "A Saucerful Of Secrets", appeared in 1972 — alongside live staples from "Ummagumma" — in the concert film "Pink Floyd At Pompeii", a kind of summation or compendium of the band's post-Barrett phase.

No song from “Atom Heart Mother” was ever played at the Pompeii concert, and it's equally telling that none of the album's tracks appear on the 2001 double compilation “Echoes”, which features a full twenty-seven songs carefully chosen from across the band's entire discography by the four classic-era members.

An atypical record in the band's trajectory, then, but no less significant for it: “Atom Heart Mother” made a huge impression on release and, in hindsight, stands as perhaps the most ambitious attempt ever made to fuse rock and classical music. In this respect, the live performances with orchestra and choir — the first dating back to 27 June at the Bath Festival — were rapturously received and further fuelled the interest of the high arts in the band (consider, for instance, the ballet project that soon after involved the group, featuring Rudolf Nureyev and choreography by Roland Petit). Even Leonard Bernstein, intrigued by the buzz the "cow album" generated in America, went to see the band live, but, ironically, he apparently found the suite extremely boring, while thoroughly enjoying the rest of the concert.

The album, referring to the vinyl format it was conceived for at the time, is structured with one side entirely devoted to the suite composed collectively by the band with the support of Ron Geesin, and another side featuring three songs written respectively by Waters, Wright and Gilmour, plus one final long collective track, “Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast”. This "democratic" setup recalls the studio disc of “Ummagumma”, on which all four members, including drummer Mason, were able to indulge their own compositional instincts on their respective instruments. The structure of a suite on one side and shorter songs on the other would later be revisited on the following album, “Meddle”.

Atom Heart Mother

(Father's Shout) Trumpets blaring (and engines revving, we might say!), off we go; the simple, epic overture of the suite, apparently written entirely by Ron Geesin, is built on brass sections into which even the roar of motorcycles is worked.

(Breast Milky). This is one of the most beautiful movements of the suite, marked by the now-famous dialogue between the arpeggiated organ and the cello, a simple yet gorgeous motif that would later be used in Italy for the iconic 1970s Fiuggi water commercial. Gilmour's guitar finally weaves into this delicate fabric. The guitarist sounds especially inspired throughout the record, and remarkably measured in his playing. After an orchestral crescendo, calm returns.

(Mother Fore). The choir enters, and its remarkable quality is immediately apparent. This movement alternates between moments of intense drama and some passages that admittedly feel a touch heavy-handed. At times there's a sense of harmonic stasis that holds back the piece's dynamic development, but the overall effect remains deeply compelling. Mason's forceful drum intro over the polyphonic choir remains a wonderful moment of dialogue between modern sound and classical form.

(Funky Dung). This is probably the most successful section of the entire suite. Bass and organ work in counterpoint, and after a few rounds, Gilmour's guitar cuts in effectively, delivering one of the finest solos of his career. But the tension builds further with the addition of the choir's onomatopoeic voices, trading vibrant, powerful exchanges with Wright's organ. This is one of the true high points in rock history. The tension dissolves as the horns return, liberating, to restate the opening theme.

(Mind Your Throats Please). This is the moment for the band's characteristic noise-driven, psychedelic detour. Over a murky bed of keyboards, sounds, evocations and voices blur together, following the band's tradition, recalling in particular the humorous digressions of “A Saucerful Of Secrets” and “Echoes”.

(Remergence). Out of the deconstruction and chaos, the themes re-emerge — first blurred and overlapping, then distinct — first that of the overture, then the cello-and-organ duet. The finale is monumental, with an ever-incisive guitar and the orchestra and choir marking out the musical crescendo.

If

A simple guitar arpeggio, a hushed voice whispering words steeped in melancholy poetry, a dreamy guitar in the brief musical interludes. This is “If”, rightly regarded as one of the sweetest songs in the Floydian catalogue. Waters stays true to that delicate soul which had already stirred the heartstrings on gems like “Julia Dream” and “Crying Song”.

Summer '68

This is Wright's contribution, at the peak of a creativity that was, at other times, more modest. While it's true that certain passages feel almost too grandiose for the orchestral arrangement, Wright's particularly good mood and evident state of grace make it easy to forgive.

“Summer '68” is simply a triumphant hymn to the joy of living, the recollection of a love affair, a flashback to the fleeting moments and emotions that a brief summer encounter can leave behind. And it's not just any summer, but that of '68.

Fat Old Sun

Simply a classic of the Floydian songbook. Gilmour's warm, understated voice and the song's dreamy, almost bucolic atmosphere recall other happy moments from the band's output of those years (for instance "Green Is The Colour" from the 1969 "More" soundtrack). The guitar, ever composed yet relentless, closes the song with a solo that would find even greater room to breathe in the band's live performances.

Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast

This is, in every respect, a rather unsuccessful experiment. Recorded in a hurry, the song wasn't entirely new territory for the band, since the underlying idea had already been explored in the suite "The Man". Often performed live by Floyd, that long suite aimed to depict the day of an ordinary man, from breakfast through to evening. In "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast", named after a roadie already immortalized on the back cover of "Ummagumma", the live-recorded sounds of an English breakfast — complete with frying eggs and requests for marmalade — alternate with three musical passages. The first, built around the organ, and the second, centred on guitars, can only be described as musical asides with neither beginning nor end. The third passage has by far the most musical substance, and at times seems to hint at a style close to what Genesis would develop in years to come.

Pink Floyd of that era seem capable of pursuing two parallel compositional paths at once. The first, more experimental strand, represented here by "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" and "Atom Heart Mother" (two atypical episodes even within an already atypical experimental phase), sees the song-form deconstructed, stretched out, turned inside out, and treated to new, sometimes revolutionary sonic inventions. A second path, well represented here by the three songs written respectively by Waters, Wright and Gilmour, instead returns to a more traditional song-form, though still steeped in a dreamy, languid, in other words distinctly "Floydian" atmosphere. One can't help wondering whether it's the first path, the steeper and bolder one, that truly defines an era, or rather the second, certainly smoother and more sweetened, yet just as charged with pathos and evocative power. A couple of albums later, with "The Dark Side Of The Moon", the band would abandon experimentalism altogether and decisively head down the second path, reaping unprecedented success. But that's another story.

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09/06/2013