Hear Roger Waters’ Early, Work-in-Progress Recordings of Pink Floyd’s The Wall

June 17th, 2014

by Josh Jones

My first exposure to Pink Floyd’s rock opera The Wall left me feeling nothing less than astonishment. And though I never had the chance to see the outrageous stage show, with its very literal wall and giant inflatable pig, the film has always struck me as a suitably dark piece of psychodrama. Over a great many subsequent listens, the melodramatic double-album can still blow my mind, but I’ve come to feel that some of the strongest material are those songs penned jointly by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, and those are relatively few. (Mark Blake quotes Gilmour as saying “things like ‘Comfortably Numb’ were the last embers of mine and Roger’s ability to work collaboratively together.) The bulk of the album belongs to Waters, its autobiographical details and personal themes, and the album and film can sometimes feel as stifled and claustrophobic as its protagonist does. This is either a creative failing or a brilliant melding of form and content.

Inspired by an incident in which an exasperated Waters spat on a rowdy fan at a stadium show in Montreal during the band’s 1977 “In the Flesh Tour,” The Wall documents the painful rise and even more painful fall of a fictive rock star named, of course, Pink (played by Bob Geldof in the film version), whose life closely parallels Waters’, down to the spitting. It has always seemed an odd irony that Waters responded to the alienation of touring massive stadiums by creating a stadium show bigger than anything the band had yet done, but it speaks to the bassist and singer’s grandiose personality and obsessive desire to turn his angst into theater. Oftentimes the results were spectacular, other times bombastic and confusing (at least to critics, some of whom are easily confused). The recording of the album, as many well know, strained the band almost to breaking, and by many accounts, Waters’ imperiousness didn’t help matters, to say the least.




All of the behind-the-scenes drama may or may not eclipse the drama of the album itself, depending on your level of fandom and interest in Pink Floyd biography. Lovers of Waters’ epic rock dramaturgy will find edification at the extensive online critical commentary Pink Floyd The Wall: A Complete Analysis, an online work in progress that delivers on its title. For a very brief account of the story behind the story, co-producer Bob Ezrin’s interview with Grammy.com offers perspective from someone involved in the project who wasn’t a member of what came to seem like The Roger Waters’ Band. Ezrin describes The Wall as “Roger’s own project and not a group effort,” and his own role as “a kind of referee between him and the rest of the band.”

In the beginning we had a very long demo that Roger had written. We started to separate out the pieces, and when we looked at the storyline we realized what we needed was a through line, something to get us from start to finish.

Ezrin recounts that he “closed [his] eyes and wrote out the movie that would become The Wall,” handed the script out to the band, and marked songs missing from Waters’ demo as “’TBW’—‘to be written.’” (Among those songs was “Comfortably Numb.”)

The recordings at the top of the post—which surfaced in 2001 with the title Under Construction—represent a step in The Wall’s evolutionary development between Waters’ rudimentary demos (short excerpts above) and the completed album. (See the Youtube page for a complete tracklist. Contrary to the uploader’s description, Roger Waters certainly does not play all the instruments.) While Under Construction has generally been referred to as a “demo,” Rick Karhu of Pink Floyd fanzine Spare Bricks expresses his doubts about the use of a term he takes to denote “a fairly polished recording”: “Demos are not rough recordings or works-in-progress […]. I doubt very much that Under Construction is a demo of The Wall.”

It’s too rough around the edges—at times shockingly so—to be strictly considered a demo recording. At points, things are haphazardly edited together. Songs cut off abruptly, fade unexpectedly or drop out entirely for a moment as if someone at the mixing desk hit the wrong button at some point. Vocal tracks peak-out, often causing anguish to the listener’s ear drums. Some instrument lines (mostly the bass guitar) meander through the background as if the person playing is making up the part as they go. Equalization is nonexistent on most tracks. Overall, most of it sounds like a 4-track recording by a band who has only the vaguest notion of how the equipment works.

Lest we take this description as disparagement, Karhu clarifies: “It is precisely for those reasons […] that I love them dearly and consider them one of the most valuable, unauthorized Floyd recordings to be unearthed. Ever.” Many Youtube commenters agree, some even arguing that these rough sketches are superior to the final polished product. It’s a debate I won’t weigh in on, though I will say that like Karhu, I enjoy the lo-fi raggedness of this version of The Wall. It seems to convey the emotionally frayed edges of these songs in a way the slick production of the studio album may not at times. Either as a mere document of the album’s early history or an alternate, fragmented—and hence more traumatized—take on The Wall, this unofficial version is haunting and strange. Does it perhaps better represent Waters’ desire to make his psychic unease into art? We invite you to judge for yourselves. And if, like me, you can listen to “Comfortably Numb” (and that incredible guitar solo) on repeat for hours on end, you may be interested to hear David Gilmour discuss the song’s composition in the interview below.




Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC.

From www.openculture.com
 

Darkside of the Moon 40th Anniversary on BBC Radio 2

The 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album (40th anniversary in March just gone) is being celebrated on the BBC and there are a couple of interesting things going on for us Pink Floyd fans.

Firstly, there is an excellent radio play called Darkside by Sir Tom Stoppard to look forward to which is an original play and much anticipated. Secondly, David Gilmour will feature on Tracks of My Years in the build up to the anniversary celebrations on BBC Radio 2. And thirdly, Pink Floyd fans get to take over the programming of BBC Radio 2 for two hours in a unique event controlled by YOU!

Darkside on BBC Radio

Legendary playwright Tom Stoppard has penned an original new play for BBC Radio 2 to mark the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s album, The Dark Side Of The Moon.

To be broadcast on Radio 2 on Monday 26 August at 10pm, Darkside, is a fantastical story based on themes from the seminal album and stars a stellar cast which includes Bill Nighy, Rufus Sewell, and Adrian Scarborough. The lead roles will be played by Olivier Award-winning Iwan Rheon (Misfits) and stage actress Amaka Okafor (The Garbage King).

UPDATE: There is an accompanying video from Aardman Animations.

Pink Floyd Fans Control BBC!

In the lead-up to the programme, Radio 2 will broadcast a number of programmes to complement and celebrate this big anniversary.

Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music will be simulcasting a unique show that will put the audience in control of the music across both networks for two hours, as they collaborate online to pick the tracks. Now Playing will provide the perfect build up to a night of exciting programming on the two stations.

The Record Producers - Pink Floyd Special

Following the broadcast, The Record Producers - Pink Floyd Special will give listeners another chance to hear Richard Allinson and Steve Levine's look at the work of Pink Floyd concentrating on the late 60s through to the mid-70s. The show will feature guitarist David Gilmour and percussionist Nick Mason, and Richard and Steve share the original multi-track recordings of some of Pink Floyd's best work from this period.

On the night of broadcast, visitors to bbc.co.uk/radio2 will be able to watch a specially commissioned animation by Aardman to accompany the drama, creating a unique, immersive audio-visual experience.

Tracks of my Years - With David Gilmour

David Gilmour will feature on the BBC Radio 2 programme Tracks of my Years with Ken Bruce. All this week Ken is marking the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's 1973 Dark Side Of The Moon album by revisiting David Gilmour's Tracks Of My Years that were first broadcast in 2006. David's choices feature two sixties classics. One from The Beatles that's features on their 1965 album Help! and a top 5 hit by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas which should get everyone dancing! There's also another play of the Album Of The Week and listeners can test their music knowledge by playing along to PopMaster.

Summary Schedule

Here is a summary of your need to know information about what is coming up!

Wednesday 21st August - 9:30am - Ken Bruce Featuring David Gilmour's Tracks of my Years on BBC Radio 2
Monday 26th August - 8:00pm BST - Pink Floyd fans take over playlist on BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music.
Monday 26th August - 10:00pm BST - Darkside Play on BBC Radio 2
Monday 26th August - 11:00pm BST - The Record Producers - Pink Floyd Special on BBC Radio 2

From neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk

Unlock a free mp3 of Money (Roger Waters Demo) with your copy of The Dark Side Of The Moon #DarkSide40

If you have purchased any version of The Dark Side Of The Moon on CD or if you purchased the 2011 remaster at iTunes or on vinyl, you can now unlock a free download of Money (Roger Waters Demo) – previously only available in the Immersion Box Set!

To access the bonus area, visit www.pinkfloyd.com/bonus and follow the on-screen instructions.

Turn The Moon Dark on March 24th - global playback event

Pink Floyd and EMI Music will mark the 40th anniversary of the original UK release of The Dark Side of The Moon on Sunday (March 24th), as fans around the globe unite to turn a specially designed moon dark. Centred around a global playback of the album on PinkFloyd.com, each memory, thought and photo tweeted as fans rediscover the album will count towards the creation of a dark side of the moon.
Starting at 00:01am GMT on Sunday, for the entire day, fans all over the world will be able to share thoughts and comments via Twitter using #DarkSide40 and witness the impact as the volume of messages combine to turn the moon dark.


Written by Matt  www.brain-damage.co
Monday, 18 March 2013

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) [Full Album]




Track 1 (Speak to Me)
Track 2 (Breathe)
Track 3 (On the Run)
Track 4 (Time)
Track 5 (The Great Gig in the Sky)
Track 6 (Money)
Track 7 (Us and Them)
Track 8 (Any Colour You Like)
Track 9 (Brain Damage)
Track 10 (Eclipse)

Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii - Directors Cut - Full Length! - 720p HD

Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is a 1972 concert film featuring the English progressive rock group Pink Floyd performing at the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy, directed by Adrian Maben. Although the band are playing a typical live set from this point in their career, the film is notable for having no audience.
The main footage in and around the amphitheatre was filmed over four days in October 1971, using the band's regular touring equipment, including studio-quality 24-track recorders. Additional footage filmed in a Paris television studio that December made up the original 1972 release. The film was then re-released in 1974 with additional studio material of the band working on The Dark Side of the Moon, and interviews at Abbey Road Studios.
The film has subsequently been released on video numerous times, and in 2003 a "Director's Cut" DVD appeared which combines the original footage from 1971 with more contemporary shots of space and the area around Pompeii, assembled by Maben. A number of notable bands have taken inspiration from the film in creating their own videos, or filming concerts without an audience.

Nick Mason talks about Dark Side of the Moon

BBC Radio 4 - The World Tonight, 28 February 2013

"PinkFloyd's groundbreaking concept album "Dark Side of the Moon" is FORTY years old tomorrow. You could say its themes are just as relevant today - madness, money, identity, disorientation, all the stresses of the modern world. But in 1973, its construction was startling - with its musical episodes flowing one into the other, and its looped and layered sound effects. Its credited as one of the most influential rock albums of all time. This afternoon we sat down with Pink Floyd's drummer Nick Mason in his North London loft, and asked him whether they'd ever suspected the album would be so big..."

http://www.bbc.co.uk
audioboo.fm

listen to ‘Pink Floyd interview’ on Audioboo

Roger Waters Interviewed by Nick Sedgewick in the Wish You Were Here songbook, October 1975

This is full  conversation with Roger Waters.  The Shine On book in songbook used only parts from this interview

Nick Sedgewick : Here's good one to start with, Roger! Why was it two years before the Floyd made an album after Dark Side of the Moon?

Roger Waters : That's a very good question, I'm very glad you asked me that one...er..

NS : Take your time... don't worry...

RW : Without looking at diaries its very difficult. I'm trying to remember whatever went on... I'm not being funny, I honestly can't remember why. It was 1973 when Dark Side of the Moon came out wasn't it? January 1973, and we're now in Oct. '75, so in January '75 we began recording Wish You Were Here...

NS : I remember I went to E.M.I. studios in the winter of '74, and the band were recording stuff with bottles and rubber bands... the period I'm talking about is the before your French tour in June '74.

RW : Ah! Right, yeah. Answer starts here... (great intake of breath)... Well, Nick... there was an abortive attempt to make an album not using any musical instruments. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn't come together. Probably because we needed to stop for a bit.

NS : Why?

RW : Oh, just tired and bored...

NS : Go on... to get off the road? ... have some breathing space?

RW : Yeah. But I don't think it was as conscious as that really. I think it was that when Dark Side of the Moon was so successful, it was the end. It was the end of the road. We'd reached the point we'd all been aiming for ever since we were teenagers and there was really nothing more to do in terms of rock'n roll.

NS : A matter of money?


RW : Yes. Money and adulation... well, those kinds of sales are every Rock'n'roll band's dream. Some bands pretend they're not, of course. Recently I was reading an article, or an interview, by one of the guys who's in Genesis, now that Peter Gabriel's left, and he mentioned PF in it. There was a whole bunch of stuff about how if you're listening to a Genesis album you really have to sit down and LISTEN, its not just wallpaper, not just high class musak like PF or 'Tubular Bells', and I thought, Yeah, I remember all that years ago when nobody was buying what we were doing. We were all heavily into the notion that it was good music, good with a capital G, and of course people weren't buying it because people don't buy good music. I may be quite wrong but my theory is that if Genesis ever start selling large quantities of albums now that Peter Gabriel, their Syd Barrett if you like, has left, the young man who gave this interview will realise he's reached some kind of end in terms of whatever he was striving for and all that stuff about good music is a load of fucking bollocks. That's my feeling anyway. And Wish You Were Here came about by us going on in spite of the fact we'd finished.

NS : What finally prompted a move back into the studio?

RW : A feeling of boredom, I think really. You've got to do something. When you've been used to working very hard for years and years, and reached the point you were working towards there's still a need to go on because you realise that where you've got to isn't what you thought it was...

NS : Was there some period during your apparent lay off when you all thought the band would come together almost 'of itself', and produce something?

RW : It's so long ago... it's hard to remember, but I think there was that feeling... that somebody would eventually come up with something, an idea. The interesting thing is that when we finally did do an album, the album (Wish You Were Here) is actually about not coming up with anything, because the album is about none of us really being there, or being there only marginally. About our non-preence in the situation we had clung to through habit, and are still clinging to through habit -- being PF. Though its moving into a sligtly different area again because I definitely think that at the beginning of WYWH recording sessions most of us didn't wish we were there at all, we wished we were somewhere else. I wasn't happy being there because I got the feeling we weren't together, the band wasn't at all together.

NS : Stage by stage, how did the album happen?

RW : We did some rehearsals in a rehearsal studio in Kings Cross, and started playing together and writing in the way we'd written a lot of things before. In the same way that 'Echoes' was written. 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' was written in exactly the same way, with odd little musical ideas coming out of various people. The first one, the main phrase, came from Dave, the first loud guitar phrase you can hear on the album was the starting point and we worked from there until we had the various parts of 'Shine On' finished.

NS : At the time the band was writing it, was the song for a tour or an album?

RW : I'm glad you asked that, 'cos you've reminded me that in fact we were about to do a British Tour (Oct - Dec '74) and had to have some new material. So we were getting some things together for that.

NS : There were a couple of other songs...

RW : Yeah. 'Raving and Drooling' and 'You've Gotta Be Crazy'. 'Raving and Drooling' was something I'd written at home. Dave came up with a nice chord sequence, I wrote some words, and we carried on from there with 'You Gotta Be Crazy'.

NS : It was then decided that these three songs would also be the basis for the forthcoming album?

RW : Yes, that was the idea for a long time... while we did that tour.

NS : When did the plans change?

RW : When we got into the studio. January '75. We started recording and it got very laborious and tortured, and everybody seemed to be very bored by the whole thing. We pressed on regardless of the general ennui for a few weeks and then things came to a bit of a head. I felt that the only way I could retain interest in the project was to try to make the album relate to what was going on there and then ie the fact that no one was really looking each other in the eye, and that it was all very mechanical... most of waht was going on. So I suggested we change it -- that we didn't do the other two songs but tried somehow to make a bridge between the first and second halves of 'Shine On', and bridge them with stuff that had some kind of relevance to the state we were all in at the time. Which is how 'Welcome to the Machine', 'Wish You Were Here', and 'Have a Cigar' came in.

NS : 'Shine On' was originally a song concerning Barrett's plight, wasn't it?

RW : Yes.

NS : Do the other songs also fit in with that?

RW : It was very strange. The lyrics were written -- and the lyrics are the bit of the song about Syd, the rest of it could be about anything -- I don't why I started writing those lyrics about Syd... I think because that phrase of Dave's was an extremely mournful kind of sound and it just... I haven't a clue... but it was a long time before the Wish You Were Here recording sessions when Syd's state could be seen as being symbolic of the general state of the group, ie very fragmented. 'Welcome to the Machine' is about 'them and us', and anyone who gets involved in the process.

NS : And 'Have a Cigar'?

RW : By taking 'Shine On' as a starting point, and wanting to write something to do with 'Shine On' ie something to do with a person succumbing to the pressures of life in general and rock'n'roll in particular... we'd just come off an American Tour when I wrote that, and I'd been exposed to all the boogaloo...

NS : No, Roger... you must have written it after the English tour, because 'Have a Cigar' was included in 'Shine On' during the American Tour in April '75...

RW : Oh yes! Right... I can't do it can I? This interview. My minds just a scrambled egg, mate. I can't answer these questions. I don't know! ... I don't know the answers to the questions. I'll have to go home and study some more. I'm going to have to think about it all very carefully then I shall make a statement to the press about all this and that. God, Peter, (Peter Barnes, Floyd Music Publisher, producing the Song Book) I'm sorry. I wanted to do this interview. I wanted it to be good, coherent, friendly interview for the punters but my mind's scrambled... no, my mind's not scrambled, I just can't get my mind round all that fucking nonsense... all that bollocks about when, how and why... you know, the medium is not the message, Marshall... is it? I mean, it's all in the lap of fucking gods... (Pause for laughter)

NS : Listen, Roger. What do you say to accusations about the album that you are biting the hand that feeds you... that the position you take up in a lot of the lyrics is highly dubious given the nature of your success?

RW : Why? Biting the hand of the record companies?

NS : Of the business...

RW : Well the business doesn't feed me, you see. It's the people who buy the records who are doing the feeding. I mean, I like to believe that the people who buy the records listen to the lyrics and some of them some of the time to think: - Yeah, that's fucking true, or there's a bit of truth in them somewhere, and that's all that really matters. Some of the lyrics may even be directed at some of the records buyers. I don't think they are on this album, but they are in some of the songs I've written that aren't recorded yet. On the album they are mainly directed at a kind of inanimate being -- the business. And the business doesn't feed us. The public feeds us; in spite of the business really. The public feed the business as well. The people who buy records feed everybody.

NS : So the disillusionment implicit in album, is only disillusionment with the business?

RW : I never harboured any illusions so far as the business was concerned. I was under some illusions so far as the band was concerned. Like I was saying earlier about the guy in Genesis who thinks that there's something special about them... I think he said their music demands you listen to it, you can't carry on a conversation while its on. I know I felt that about our music at one time 'cos I've listened to interviews I did, and sat and laughed myself sick listening to those. You know, twenty year old punks spouting a whole bunch of shit, a whole bunch of middle class shit, about "quality", making qualitative judgements about what we were doing. And when one or two pundits said that we were real music and a cut above average rock'n roll band, or set us apart from the mainstream of rock'n roll as something rather special and important. I was very happy to believe it at the time. Of course it's absolute crap. Electric pop is where its at in terms of music today. Nobody's writing modern works for symphony orchestras that anybody's... well some people my be interested, but fucking few, and the divisions that always existed between popular music and serious music are no longer there. You can't get any more serious than Lennon at his most serious. If you get any more serious than that you fucking throw yourself under a train.

NS : I'd like to know more about the early difficulties you had in the studio during Wish You Were Here.

RW : I think having made it -- having become very successful -- was the starting point. But having made it, if we could all have accepted that's what we were in it for, we could then have all split up gracefully at that point. But we can't, and the reason we can't is, well there are several reasons. I haven't really thought about this very carefully, but I would say one reason is: - if you have a need to make it, to become, a super-hero in your own terms and a lot of other peoples as well, when you make it the need isn't dissipated -- you still have the need, therefore you try to maintain your position as a superhero. I think that's true of all of us. Also, when you've been in a band eight years and you've all been working and plugging away to get to the top together its very frightening to leave, to do something else. Its nice and safe and warm and easy... basically its easy. If the four of us now got together and put out a record that didn't have our name attached to it it would be bloody difficult. The name 'Pink Floyd', the name not us, not the individuals in the band, but the name Pink Floyd is worth millions of pounds. The name is probably worth one million sales of album, any album we put out. Even if we just coughed a million people will have ordered it simply because of the name. And if anybody leaves, or we split up, its back to our own resources without the name. None of us are sure of our resources; an awful lot of people in rock'n roll aren't sure of their resources. That's way they're in there trying to prove they're big and loveable... I mean, I know I'm big and loveable, Nick, but I'm worried about some of the other chaps... (Laughter)... that's why I stay in the group... I'm worried about the others, whats going to become of them... (More laughter)

NS : Having decided on bridging 'Shine On', the album then came quite easily, didn't it?

RW : Yes. Quite quick and easy. 'Have a Cigar' first... actually some of the lyrics to 'Wish You Were Here' came first. Just lyrics on a piece of paper, several couplets and pairs of words. That was kind of shelved, then 'Have A Cigar'. When we changed the plan we had a big meeting -- we all sat round and unburdened ourselves a lot, and I took notes on what everybody was saying. It was a meeting about what wasn't happening and why. Dave was always clear that he wanted to do the other two songs -- he never quite copped what I was talking about. But Rick did and Nicky did and he was outvoted so we went on.

NS : The sessions were in two blocks, weren't they?

RW : Two blocks. The middle of Janyary to the middle of March. An American Tour, then another month (May) in the studio, another American Tour, then we came back and finished it off. Took three weeks, I think.

NS : How much of our albums arise spontaneously in studio work, and how much is laid down before you ever record?

RW : You can't really generalise. For example, 'Have a Cigar'. The verses, (tune and words) were all written before I ever played it to the others. Except the stuff before and after the vocal, that happened in the studio. The same with 'Welcome to the Machine' -- the verses were done, but the run up and out was in the studio. 'Dark Side' was done much more with us all working together. We all sat in a room for ages and ages -- we'd got a whole lot of pieces of music and I put an idea over the whole thing and wrote the words. Having laid lyrics on the different bits we decided what order to put them in, and how to link them. It wasn't like the concept came first and then we worked right through it.

NS : No rule then, about which come first -- the music or lyric?

RW : No, except that either the music comes first and the lyrics are added, or music and lyrics come together. Only once have the lyrics been written down first -- 'Wish You Were Here'. But this is unusual; it hasn't happened before.

NS : Why did you get Roy Harper to do the vocal on 'Have a Cigar'?

RW : ... a lot of people think I can't sing, including me a bit. I'm very unclear about what singing is. I know I find it hard to pitch, and I know the sound of my voice isn't very good in purely aesthetic terms, and Roy Harper was recording his own album in another EMI studio at the time, he's a mate, and we thought he could probably do a job on it.

NS : Didn't you also use Stephane Grappelly on the album somewhere?

RW : Yeah. He was downstairs when we were doing 'Wish You Were Here'. Dave had made the suggestion that there ought to be a country fiddle at the end of it, or we might try it out, and Stephane Grappelli was downstairs in number one studio making an album with Yehudi Menuhin. There was an Australian guy looking after Grappelli who we'd met on a tour so we thought we'd get Grappelli to do it. So they wheeled him up after much bartering about his fee -- him being an old pro he tried to turn us over, and he did to a certain extent. But it was wonderful to have him come in and play a bit.

NS : He's not on the album now, though?

RW : You can just hear him if you listen very, very, very hard right at the end of 'Wish You Were Here', you can just hear a violin come in after all the wind stuff starts -- just! We decided not to give him credit, 'cos we thought it might be a bit of an insult. He got his #300, though.

NS : I want to ask about your own writing. Do you work at it? Do you sit down and think: - Ah! today I'll write a song?

RW : Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think, RIGHT!, and go and pick up a guitar and occasionally it works. Usually something just flashes into my mind and I think, well, I better write this down and then I go and pick up the guitar. Usually a word, a phrase, a thought, or an idea. Once you've got five words or a series of words that contain an idea... like 'come in here, dear boy' then from that point on it becomes quite easy -- or at least to do one verse. What's difficult is writing another verse, then another. The first is easy.

NS : What about the two songs that weren't on the album.

RW : I think we'll record those, and there's a couple of other songs I'd like the Floyd to record.

NS : What? Another album in the next twelve months?

RW : Oh yes, in the next few months, I've got a feeling we may knock another one off a bit sharpish... bang it out... O.K. you started asking me why two years after 'Dark Side', and "why not?" is how I feel about it. All this bloody nonsense in the press about "waiting for so long". Sure some people may have been waiting but it's only important 'cos a lot of people buy them. It's only important to the fucking papers and the pundits because a lot of people buy it.

NS : Do you think the Floyd will do concerts again?

RW : I've really no idea... not unless something fairly stupendous happens.

NS : Do you personally want to do more with the Floyd?

RW : I've been through a period when I've not wished to do any concerts with the Floyd ever again. I felt that very strongly, but the last week I've had vague kind of flickerings, feeling that I could maybe have a play. But when those flickerings hit the front of my mind I cast myself back into how fucking dreadful I felt on the last American Tour with all those thousands and thousands and thousands of drunken kids smashing each other to pieces. I felt dreadful because it had nothing to do with us -- I didn't think there was any contact between us and them. There was no more contact between us and them than them and... I was just about to say the Rolling Stones and them. There obviously is contact of a kind between Mick Jagger and the public but its wierd and its not the kind of contact that I want to be involved with really. I don't like it. I don't like all that Superstar hysteria. I don't like the idea of selling that kind of dream 'cos I know its unreal 'cos I'm there. I'm at the top... I am the dream and it ain't worth dreaming about. Not in the way they think it is anyway. It's all that "I want to be a rock'n roll singer" number which rock'n roll sells on. It sells partly on the music but it sells a hell of a lot on the fact that it pushes that dream.

NS : A lot of people have made remarks to me over the album's sadness.

RW : I'm glad about that... I think the world is a very, very sad fucking place... I find myself at the moment, backing away from it all... I'm very sad about Syd, I wasn't for years. For years I suppose he was a threat because of all that bollocks written about him and us. Of course he was very important and the band would never have fucking started without him because he was writing all the material. It couldn't have happened without him but on the other hand it couldn't have gone on with him. He may or may not be important in Rock'n Roll anthology terms but he's certainly not nearly as important as people say in terms of Pink Floyd. So I think I was threatened by him. But when he came to the 'Wish You Were Here' sessions -- ironic in itself -- to see this great, fat, bald, mad person, the first day he came I was in fucking tears... 'Shine On's' not really about Syd -- he's just a symbol for all the extremes of absence some people have to indulge in because it's the only way they can cope with how fucking sad it is -- modern life, to withdraw completely. And I found that terribly sad... I think finally that that maybe one of the reasons why we get slagged off so much now. I think it's got a lot to do with the fact that the people who write for the papers don't want to know about it because they're making a living from Rock'n Roll.

NS : And they don't want to know the real Barrett / Pink Floyd story.

RW : Oh, they definitely don't want to know the real Barrett story... there are no facts involved in the Barrett story so you can make up any story you like -- and they do. There's a vague basis in fact ie Syd was in the band and he did write the material on the first album, 80% of it, but that's all. It is only that one album, and that's what people don't realise. That first album, and one track on the second. That's all; nothing else.

NS : Some of the reviews have been particularly scathing about 'Shine On'...calling it an insult to Syd.

RW : Have they? I didn't see that, but I can imagine because its so easy for them. Its one of the very best kind of rock'n roll stories: - we are very successful and because we're very successful we're very vulnerable to attack and Syd is the weapon that is used to attack us. It makes it all a bit spicy -- and that's what sells the papers that the people write for. But its a so very easy because none of its fact -- it's all hearsay and none of them know anything, and they all just make it up. Somebody makes it up once and the others believe it. All that stuff about Syd starting the space-rock thing is just so much fucking nonsense. He was completely into Hilaire Belloc, and all his stuff was kind of whimsical -- all fairly heavy rooted in English literature. I think Syd had one song that had anything to do with space -- Astronomy Domine -- that's all. That's the sum total of all Syd's writing about space and yet there's this whole fucking mystique about how he was the father of it all. It's just a load of old bollocks -- it all happened afterwards. There's an instrumental track which we came up with together on the first album -- 'Interstellar Overdrive' -- that's just the title, you see, it's actually an abstract piece with an interstellar attchment in terms of its name. They don't give a shit anyway.... I'm very pleased that people are copping the album's sadness, that gives me a doleful feeling of pleasure -- that some of the people out there who are listening to it are getting it. Not like the cunts who are writing in the papers: - "gosh, well, we waited so long for this", and then start talking about the fucking guitar solo in wierd terms, and who obviously haven't understood what it's about. That guitar phrase of Dave's, the one that inspired the whole piece, is a very sad phrase. I think these are very mournful days. Things aren't getting better, they're getting worse and the seventies is a very baleful decade. God knows what the eighties will be like. The album was very difficult; it was a bloody difficult because of the first six weeks of the sessions ie. 'Shine On', not the sax solo which was put on afterwards, but the basic track was terribly fucking hard to do because we were all out of it and you can hear it. I could always hear it, kind of mechanical and heavy. That's why I'm so glad people are copping the sadness of it -- that in spite of ourselves we did manage to get something down, we did manage to get something of what was going on in those sessions down on the vinyl. Once we accepted that we were going to go off on a tangent during the sessions it did become exciting, for me anyway, because then it was a desperate fucking battle trying to make it good. Actually we expended too much energy before that point in order to be able to quite do it. By the time we were finishing it, after the second American Tour, I hadn't got an ounce of creative energy left in me anywhere, and those last couple of weeks were a real fucking struggle.

NS : The nightmare was simply all of you arriving at doing it, and not really knowing why?

RW : Yes, absolutely. Which is why it's good. It's symbolic of what was going on. Most people's experience is arriving at a point at which others are arriving from somewhere else and not knowing what they're doing and why. And all we were doing making Wish You Were Here was being like everybody else -- full of doubts and uncertainties. You know, we don't know whats happening either...

NS : You were just fulfilling a contract?

RW : Not really, because we don't have to make albums. Fulfilling a contract with ourselves if you like, because although legally we don't have to do anything, we do have to do something otherwise we'd all shoot ourselves.

From utopia.knoware.nl/users/ptr/pfloyd

La Vallée - The Valley (1972 - full movie), music by Pink Floyd

La Vallée is a 1972 French film written and directed by Barbet Schroeder. The film stars Bulle Ogier as Viviane, a woman who goes on a strange and accidental voyage of self-discovery through the New Guinea bush. The Pink Floyd album Obscured by Clouds is the soundtrack to the film. The actress credited as "Monique Giraudy" is actually an alias of Miquette Giraudy, longtime vocalist/synthesizer player who went on to play in progressive rock/space rock band Gong, with her partner Steve Hillage, and later formed electronic group System 7 with Hillage.

Pink Floyd - ATOM HEART MOTHER (Conservatoire National supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, 2003)

"Atom Heart Mother" is a six-part suite by progressive rock band Pink Floyd, composed by all members of the band and Ron Geesin. It appeared on the Atom Heart Mother album in 1970, taking up the whole first side of the original vinyl record. It is Pink Floyd's longest uncut piece (the later "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", though longer, was split between two sides of Wish You Were Here.) Pink Floyd performed it live between 1970 and 1972, occasionally with a brass section and choir in 1970-71.

Performed by Conservatoire National supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris  (CNSMDP) in March of 2003.

The story behind Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' - Digital Journal,Aug 10, 2012

The story behind Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here'



Pink Floyd's 1975 album, "Wish You Were Here", has been considered a favorite among fans and members of the band alike. The follow-up to the largely successful "Dark Side of the Moon", WYWH has gotten a Blu-ray documentary about how this gem was created.
The iconic Pink Floyd album, Wish You Were Here, is now having its true story told thanks to Eagle Rock Entertainment. The Blu-ray documentary, Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here, documents the band's production of the 1975 follow-up to the smash hit, Dark Side of the Moon reports Laughing Squid.
According to Open Culture, the behind-the-scenes look at WYWH kicks off with the creation of the ethereal tune that is "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," inspired by the tragic fall of the group's first front-man, Syd Barrett.

The recording sessions for Wish You Were Here were some of the last Barrett was seen in public. He showed up at Abbey Road Studios with his head and eyebrows shaven, appearing quite portly as well. His former bandmates initially didn't even recognize him. The experience even led Barrett to be the main influence of Bob Geldof's character, Pink, from the motion picture, The Wall.
Barrett finally went into permanent seclusion in 1978 up until his death from pancreatic cancer in 2006, sans a brief trip to London in 1982. He had also been battling diabetes for several years.
Wish You Were Here is often touted as a favorite Pink Floyd album by fans, as well as bandmembers David Gilmour and the late Richard Wright.
The following is a short synopsis for the film:


"This program tells the story of the making of this landmark release through new interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason and archive interviews with the late Richard Wright. Also featured are sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson, guest vocalist Roy Harper, front cover burning man Ronnie Rondell and others involved in the creation of the album. Original recording engineer Brian Humphries revisits the master tapes at Abbey Road Studios to illustrate aspects of the songs construction.
"Bonus Features: The Blu-ray contains additional bonus material not featured in the TV broadcast version, including further interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason plus Roger Waters and David Gilmour performing excerpts from the Wish You Were Here album."

By Abigail Prendergast
From www.digitaljournal.com

Roger Waters, at home, Islington, London, 1970

 
© BARRIE WENTZELL, 1970

From www.morrisonhotelgallery.com

PINK FLOYD "CYMBALINE"

12/07/1971

PINK FLOYD "SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN"

12/07/1971

Pink Floyd - Live At Pompeii, 1972

Tracklist;
01:41 - Echoes (part 1)
13:18 - Careful With That Axe, Eugene
19:48 - A Saucerful Of Secrets
29:45 - One Of These Days
35:23 - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
45:25 - Mademoiselle Nobs
47:16 - Echoes (part 2)

Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is a 1972 film featuring Pink Floyd performing six songs in the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy. It was directed by Adrian Maben and recorded in the month of October using studio-quality 24-track recorders without a live audience. The film was scheduled for a special premiere at London's Rainbow Theatre, on 25 November 1972. It was canceled at the last minute by the theater's owners, Rank Strand. Their eventual explanation was that the film didn't have a certificate from the British Board of Censors and they wouldn't allow the Rainbow Theatre, which was a music venue, to be a venue for showing a film and thus could be seen to be in competition with their other established cinemas.

                                           

Roger Waters & Nick Mason Zigzag Interview - 1973

In 1973, just as The Dark Side of the Moon was about to eclipse the world, Zigzag magazine’s Connor McKnight cornered Roger Waters and Nick Mason for a rare interview.  The topics: Syd Barrett, Marcel Proust, “crumpet” on the road, and much more besides…

Where did you get your name from?
RW: (groans) Oh no… you can make something up.

In an earlier Zigzag, we chronicled the early days of The Pink Floyd.  The story was told from the point of view of Peter Jenner, one half of Blackhill Enterprises who discovered Pink Floyd and managed them for a few years.  Was the story we ran about the meeting with Peter Jenner the way you remember it?
RW: Yes, as far as I can remember it.  He must have come to a gig.  Maybe it was one of those funny things at the Marquee.  But had and [co-manager] Andrew King approached us and said, “You lads could be bigger than the Beatles”, and we sort of looked at him and replied in a dubious tone, “Yes, well, we’ll see you when we get back from our hols”, because we were all shooting off for some sun on the Continent.  We like to think that we would have made it anyway, later on maybe.  We definitely don’t believe in the myth of managers making bands.

Were you influenced by American bands, apart from the R&B stuff.  For example, Interstellar Overdrive [from Floyd’s first album, 1967’s The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn] seems to me to have a very Velvet Underground feel to it?
NM: We never heard much of that.
RW: hat was nicked from Love wasn’t it?  It was a cross between the theme to Steptoe and Son and that Love track on their first album, which I can’t remember.
NM: I’d never heard any of those bands.  Someone in the band had Authentic R&B Volumes I to III – lots of Bo Diddley – but we never heard any of the other American stuff… It was a complete amazement to us when we did hear them in the States.  There was such confusion.  People would come over and talk about those far-out West Coast bands like Jefferson Airplane and Sopwith Camel, a whole string of names, half of which were bubblegum groups.
RW: And the others were country blues bands.

But you were listening to Love, they were pretty unknown at that time.
NM: We weren’t listening to Love.  Peter Jenner was.  We were listening to Cream and The Who, Hendrix.  That was what turned me on to being in a band again.

Was it true, as Jenner was quoted as saying at the time, that he got you to drop the R&B stuff?
RW: No, that’s absolute rubbish.  He had little influence over what we played at all.  The idea that Peter Jenner steered us away from Roadrunner into a new realm of psychedelia is crap.  As Syd [Barrett, Floyd’s original frontman] wrote more songs, we dropped others from the repertoire.  But we went on doing Roadrunner and Gimme a Break and all that stuff for years.

What was the UFO Club like for you?  Was it as magical as legend now has it?
NM: It’s got rosier with age, but there is a germ of truth in it, because for a brief moment it looked as though there might actually be some combining of activities.  People would go down to this place, and a number of people would do a number of things, rather than simply one band performing.  There would be some mad actors, a couple of light shows, perhaps the recitation of some poetry or verse, and a lot of wondering about and a lot of cheerful chatter going on.
RW: Mind you, there were still freaks standing at the side of the stage screaming that we’d sold out.
NM: Actually, Roger, that was usually the other band.  One night we played with a band called The Brothers Grimm, and that night at least, it was either the band or their lady friends.  I remember that well because it hit hard.

What about that other great legend, The Great Technicolour Dream [gig at Alexandra Palace, North London, 1967]?
RW: Oh that was a joke.
NM: That was the night we did East Dereham [in Norfolk] as well.
RW: I’ll never forget that night.  We did a double header.  Firs of all we played to a roomful of about 500 gypsies, hurling abuse and fighting, and then we did Ally Pally… There was so much dope and acid around in those days that I don’t think anyone can remember anything about anything.

What did you think of Pete Murray saying on Juke Box Jury that you were just a cult?
RW: Now he didn’t say that.  This is where my memory doesn’t play tricks, because it will always remain crystal clear.  (Menacingly) He said we were a con.  He thought it was just contrived rubbish to meet some kind of unhealthy demand.  Well… the man’s an idiot.  A fifth-rate idiot, and always has been.

I remember David Jacobs – or maybe it was Pete Murray – saying, in tones of a magistrate, “I understand that there is a lot of this psychedelic stuff in America, but I very much hope that it doesn’t catch on here.”
NM: That’s fantastic.  That programme obviously had a great impact on people.  The nice thing is that we can all remember it after all these years, and see that they’ve all been made to look very stupid.
RW: But both our first two singles [Arnold Layne and See Emily Play] were so bloody innocuous, there was nothing difficult about either of them.
NM: But people still say that.  You know: ‘I have to listen very carefully, and I can just about understand the music.’

You got hassled by the BBC a couple of times, didn’t you?
RW: We had to change all the lyrics in one song [the B-side to Arnold Layne] because it was about rolling joints.  It was called Let’s Roll Another One, and we had to change the title to Candy and a Currant Bun and it had lines in it like…
NM: “Tastes right if you eat it right”.
RW: No, they didn’t like that at all.

Doesn’t that contradict the image of the underground band – that you agreed to change the line?
NM: Christ, no.  We were a rock’n’roll band, and if you’re a rock’n’roll band and you’ve got a record that you want to be Number 1, you get it played, and if they say take something out or whatever, you do it.  In fact what you do is exactly what was done – you make as much press out of it as possible.  You ring up the Evening Standard and say: “Did you know that the BBC won’t play our record because it mentions your paper?”
RW: That line was changed to Daily Standard to appease the BBC, but nobody ever heard it because it was such a lousy record.

You used to slag off a lot of your own records at the time.  You once described It Would Be So Nice [Floyd’s fourth UK single] as complete trash, and added that anyone who bought it needed their head looking at.
RW: (Laughing) I think that’s the truth.
NM: It was an awful record, wasn’t it?  At that period we had no direction.  We were being hustled about to make hit singles.  There’s so many people saying it’s important, you start to think it is important.

Did you get upset by the failure of your subsequent singles?
NM: No, I can’t understand why actually, but we didn’t.

You never had a feeling that you were rubbish – that maybe they were right?
NM: We may have thought that we weren’t good musicians but we never thought that they were right.  It’s funny, but I never did feel that we’d had it when two singles slumped horribly – that it was all over.

You applied for an Arts Council Grant in 1968.  What on earth was that about?
NM: (Amid explosions of laughter) It was another of Peter Jenner’s ideas.
RW: It was a bloody good idea.
NM: But the Arts Council just aren’t into subsidising bands.
RW: Peter is just great for ideas – free bands, free festivals and so on.
NM: There’s much more to it that that.  Whatever we say about the now, they did discover us, and to some extent they discovered T-Rex.  They definitely have a talent in a way that other people don’t.

But what was the grant meant to be for?
NM: I don’t think anyone really knew – to put on a film or some show, mainly just to keep the finances running, I should think.  We’ve been heavily in debt ever since we started – up until a few years ago – and Blackhill was at the height of our indebtness – our debt peak.
RW: At the end of the week we’d all go in to get our cheques, and week by week people would start to go in earlier and earlier.  They’d collect their cheque, dash around to their band and have it expressed, because there wasn’t enough to pay everybody, so whoever got their cheque first got their money.  Cheques were just bouncing all the time because there wasn’t enough money in the account, and if the bank manager wouldn’t let the overdraft get bigger, then you didn’t get paid.
NM: They were usually seven, eight, maybe nine thousand overdrawn, but they were usually owed a fortune too.

Were Floyd gigs in the early days scary?
NM: No, not really.  We got jolly annoyed but we weren’t really scared.  We just went on and on and on.  We never said, “Damn this, let’s pack it in”.
RW: Where was it that we actually had broken beer mugs smashing into the drumkit?
NM: East Dereham, and the California Ballroom, Dunstable.
RW: The California Ballroom was the one where they were pouring pints of beer on to us from the balcony.  That was most unpleasant, and very, very dangerous too.

How much were you getting paid for that?
NM: Two hundred and fifty pounds, because we were a hit parade group and we could draw people.
RW: Went down after that, though, to about a ton.
NM: No.  It never went down that low, Rog – maybe £135 once or twice.
RW: Actually, I remember the worst thing that ever happened to me was at The Feathers Club in Ealing, which was a penny thrown at me, which made a bloody great cut in the middle of my forehead.  I bled quite a lot.  And I stood right at the front of the stage, glowering in a real rage, and I was gonna leap out into the audience and get him.  Happily, there was one freak who turned up who liked us, so the audience spent the whole evening beating the shit out of him and left us alone.

Have you ever gone in for smashing hotels and things like that?
RW: No.

But what do you do on the road in America to combat the boredom?
RW: Unlike most other bands, we’re not heavily into crumpet on the road.  What we’re heavily into is swimming pools and trips to see or do things.  If we can get together any kind of activity, we’ll all be into it.  We play football, go to American football matches.
NM: And we have crazes like Monopoly and Backgammon.  We also tend to work almost daily, which is important because otherwise it is so boring, but none of us are smashers.

In the early days, though, you have toured with other bands?...
NM: We don’t know any other bands really.  The nearest we got to that was The Who, where we did about three gigs with them.  It’s a whole area of social life that we’ve missed out on.
RW: I think The Who are still my favourite band to meet on the road, because they’re the same kind of people as we are really.  They’re not all smashers.  Moony’s a smasher, but he’s a very sophisticated smasher – he’s got it down to a fine art.  When he’s not smashing, he’s incredibly amusing.
NM: He’s very good company to have a drink with.  A lot of people are just drunken maniacs, just lurching about, being boring.
RW: The Who like a good chat, except for Roger Daltrey.
NM: You’ve never recovered from the time he thought Rick [Wright] was Eric Clapton.  It was in a band room somewhere.
RW: At the Fillmore.
NM: He came up to Rick and said, “Hello man, good to see you.”  And Rick was thinking, “Shit, that’s funny”.
RW: And when he realised he slunk off, and we’ve never seen him since.

In around 1968, you were saying that you wanted to do a rock circus…
NM: The circus was quite advanced in the organisation stage.  We actually did have a big top but there was some fantastic reason why the tent people pulled out.
RW: We got a bit of that feel at the Earls Court gigs last week.  When we were setting up, I thought that it did look a bit like a circus with all these wires going into the audience.  And the plane we used at Earls Court was very like those circus space rockets that people whip round and round in – it was silver and red and about six foot long, like a bloody great aluminium paper dart, flashing lights and smoke, amazing.

What do you feel is the role of sound effects on albums?
RW: Speaking for myself, I’ve always felt that the differentiation between a sound effect and music is all a load of shit.  Whether you make a sound on a guitar or a water tap is irrelevant, because it doesn’t make any difference.  We started on a piece a while ago which was carrying this to its logical extreme, or one of its logical extremes, where we don’t use any recognisable musical instruments at all – bottles, knives, anything at all, felling axes and stuff like that – which we will complete at some juncture, and it’s turning into a really nice piece.

What’s the lowdown on all this science fiction stuff and space music?
RW: Christ, I hardly ever read science fiction now.  I used to read a lot but only occasionally now.  I suppose the reason I liked to read science fiction novels was that they give the writer the chance to expound and explore very obvious ideas.  Sticking something in the future, or in some different time or place, allows you to examine things without thinking about all the stuff that everybody already knows about, and reacts to automatically, getting in the way.  Also, you get some bloody good yarns, and I like a good yarn.

How does that relate to the description on your music as space rock?
RW: Not very much.
NM: That was a convenient tag.
RW: Which was held over for so bloody long.  People are still calling it space rock.  People come and listen to The Dark Side of the Moon and call it space rock, just because it’s got moon in the title.  The other thing that they do is say that we’ve gone from outer space to inner space, which is daft.  We haven’t done many tracks that had anything to do with science fiction at all.  It just depends on what you read into it.  We did three songs, Astronomy Domine, Set The Controls… and Let There Be More Light.

A lot of writers have used analogies with painting to describe their feelings about your music.  Do you share that at all?
RW: Maybe.  I think that sometimes there may be something that isn’t inherently apparent in the piece because of the lyrics, so it becomes very easy to let your imagination go.
NM: People often listen to the music and come up with a visualisation about what it is about, and when they’ve had it they think they’ve got it, they’ve discovered the secret.  Sometimes they even bother to write to us and say, “I’ve got it – I’ve got the answer.  It’s cornfields, isn’t it?”
RW: And when they say it to us, we tell them the truth.  We just say, “If that’s what it is to you, then that’s what it is.”  But it can be whatever you want – it doesn’t matter what you visualise, it’s not important.
NM: And they’re invariably disappointed.
RW: The way our music impinges on your mind makes it very easy to conjure up some vision, very easy to imagine some scene.  If you’re listening to John Cage or Stockhausen it’s very difficult, because the music is all squeaks and bubbles.  It’s more like hard-edge, real, abstract painting.  There are definite things in it like triangles and squares.  It doesn’t give you an overall impression of The Battle of Waterloo or whatever, it’s triangles and squares, that you respond to in an intellectual way.  Our music is non-intellectual, it is straight emotional response gear.

Why did Syd Barrett leave – what’s the true story?
NM: What true story would you like?  Have you heard the one about how he threatened us with a gun?
RW: That’s a good one.
NM: Do you want the story behind the facts?

What were your feelings about it?
NM: We staggered on, thinking to ourselves that we couldn’t carry on without Syd, so we put up with what can only be described as an unreliable maniac.  We didn’t choose to use those words, but I think he was.
RW: Syd turned into a very strange person.  Whether he was sick in any way or not is not for us to say in these days of dispute about the nature of madness.  All that I know is that he was murder to live and work with.
NM: Impossible…
RW: We definitely reached a stage where all of us were getting very depressed just because it was a terrible mistake to go on trying to do it.  He had become completely incapable of working in the group.
NM: And it seemed his whole bent was on frustrating us.

Yet you helped him on his solo album?
RW: That was because – and I still believe this now – he is one of the three best songwriters in the world.

What’s he doing now?
RW: I don’t know.  Not very much, that’s why we worked on the album.  There was a great plan to expand the group, to get in two other geezers – some two freaks that he’d met somewhere or other.  One of them played the banjo and the other played the saxophone.  We weren’t into that at all, and it was obvious the crunch had finally come.  One evening we went to UFO to do a gig and Syd didn’t turn up, so we did it alone and it was great.  We went down well and we enjoyed playing together.
NM: That’s fantastic because I don’t think it’s true.
RW: Don’t you, didn’t you think it was good?
NM: No, I think you’re imagining a situation that never happened.  Syd arrived, but his arms hung by his side, with the occasional strumming.  That was the night of doing…
RW: …Saturday Club.
NM: Right, which was the breakdown, but that wasn’t the end of it all.  That evening was something referred to four months later.
RW: Anyway, and Nick’s almost certainly right, because my memory’s a bit dodgy.  It was more or less that we did a gig without Syd.  He may have been on the stage but we really did it without him, he just stood there with the guitar hanging around his neck, which was something he was prone to do after that we realised we could manage.
NM: But we didn’t do anything about it for some months.  We had a long think at Christmas.
RW: So it must have been over that Christmas that we got in touch with Dave (Gilmour) and said, “Whooaa Dave, wink wink!”
NM: So we were teaching Dave the numbers with the idea that we were going to be a five-piece.  But Syd came in with some new material.  The song went Have You Got It Yet, and he kept changing it so that no one could learn it.
RW: It was a real act of mad genius.  The interesting thing about it was that I didn’t suss it out at all.  I stood there for about an hour while he was singing, “Have you got it yet”, trying to explain that he was changing it all the time so I couldn’t follow it.  He’d sing, “Have you got it yet” and I’d sing, “No, no”.  Terrific.

What happened to the ballet Pink Floyd were supposed to be making?  It was based on Proust, wasn’t it?
RW: It never happened.  First of all it was Proust, then it was Aladdin, then it was something else.  We had this great lunch one day, me, Nick and Steve [O’Rourke, Floyd’s manager], with Nureyev, Roman Polanski, Roland Petit, some film producer of other.  It was to talk about us doing the music for a ballet, and Roland choreographing it, and Rudy being the star, and Roman Polanski directing the film, and making this fantastic ballet film.  It was a complete joke because no one had any idea what they wanted to do.

But you said at the time that you’d just been out and bought the entire works of Proust to study.
RW: I did.
NM: But nobody read anything.  David did the worst – he only read the first 18 pages.
RW: I read the second volume of Swann’s Way, and when I got to the end of it I thought, “Oh what, I’m not reading any more, I can’t handle it.”  It just went too slowly for me.
NM: It just went on for two years, this idea of doing a ballet, with no one coming up with any ideas, us not setting aside any time because there was nothing specific, until in a desperate moment, Roland devised a ballet to some existing music, which I think was a good idea.  It’s looked upon a bit sourly now.
RW: We all sat around this table until someone thumped the table and said, “What’s the idea then?” and everyone just sat there drinking this wine and getting more and more drunk, with more and more poovery going on around the table, until someone suggested Frankenstein and Nureyev started getting a bit worried.  They talked about Frankenstein for a bit – I was just sitting there enjoying the meat and the vibes, saying nothing…
NM: Yes, with Roland’s hand upon your knee.
RW: …And when Polanski was drunk enough he started to suggest that we make the blue movie to end all blue movies, and then it all petered out into cognac and coffee, and then we jumped into our cars and split.  God knows what happened after we left.

How did Floyd’s soundtrack to the Zabriskie Point movie come about?
RW: We went to Rome and stayed in this posh hotel.  Every day we would get up at about 4:30 in the afternoon, we’d pop into the bar, and sit there until about seven.  Then we’d stagger into the restaurant, where we’d eat for about two hours, and drink.  By about halfway through the two weeks, the guy there was beginning to suss out what we wanted; we kept asking for these ridiculous wines, so by the end he was coming up with these really insane wines.  Anyway, we’d finished eating – the crepes suzettes would finally slide down by about a quarter to nine.
NM: The peach Melba was good too.  I used to start with sole Bonne Femme, followed by the roast leg of lamb cooked with rosemary, and then a peach Melba or a crepes suzettes… Or perhaps both.
RW: We’d start work at about nine.  The studio was a few minutes walk down the road, so we’d stagger down.  We could have finished the whole thing in about five days because there wasn’t much to do.  Antonioni was there and we did some great stuff, but he’d listen and go – and I remember he had this terrible twitch – “Eet’s very beauteeful, but eet’s too sad” or “Eets too strroong”.  It was always wrong consistently.  There was always something that stopped it from being perfect.  You’d change whatever was wrong and he’d still be unhappy.  It was hell.  He’d sit there and fall asleep every so often, and we’d go on working till about seven or eight in the morning, go back and have breakfast, go to bed, get up and then back into the bar.



What was your reaction to the review in Rolling Stone recently? [After years of their reporters not showing up for pre-arranged interviews, nor apologising, Floyd told RS to get lost when, in the wake of Dark Side…, they asked again.  The paper carried a vitriolic attack on the band’s gig in New York in the next issue…]
RW: Well, I’m sure you know the story.  [The magazine’s writer] never got into the band room – everybody else did, but we do draw the line at people from Rolling Stone.  It’s hard to generalise about them all because I don’t know all of them, but from my experience of meeting people from there, they’re all a bunch of power-mad maniacs.  They are completely carried away with the idea that the media surrounding rock’n’roll, or at least their corner of it, is more important than the actual thing.  Though they did print a letter in the most recent issue from someone saying, “Dear Ed, if you didn’t’ like it then you were in the minority of one”, which is something the Melody Maker wouldn’t do in similar circumstances, I can assure you.

Why didn’t you attend the [Dark Side Of The Moon] press reception at the London Planetarium?
RW: Nicky and Dave and I thought that it was so daft that we tried to get it stopped, and when they refused to stop it, we refused to go to it.  I think it was pathetic.
NM: The intention was to have the Planetarium with a quadraphonic mix, which I would have been into, but there wasn’t a quadraphonic mix, there was only a stereo mix, and they’d got the most terrible speakers.  I heard that it was stereo, not very well done, with cold chicken and rice on paper plates.
RW: The only point of it was to make a really first-class presentation of a quadraphonic mix of the album, so that it was something special.  We didn’t have time to do that, so we said, “You can’t do it.”  But EMI wanted to do something, so they went ahead.  Obviously we couldn’t stop them from doing it, but I thought it was daft.

Final question: What would you say is the meaning of your music… No, I’m just kidding – let’s go and have a beer.

This is an abridged version of an interview that first appeared in Zigzag 32, 1973.

From: www.pinkfloydz.com

Roger Waters & David Gilmour Interview 1972 (French)

Patrice BLANC FRANCARD s'entretient avec David GILMOUR et Roger WATERS, têtes pensantes des PINK FLOYD. Ils évoquent l'enregistrement de la musique du nouveau film de Barbet SCHROEDER, "La vallée", parlent de l'évolution de leur musique et de l'envergure de leur carrière. La fin de l'interview est illustrée par des images du groupe travaillant dans un studio d'enregistrement à Hérouvillle (en off, "The Gold it's in the..").

From: www.ina.fr

Pink Floyd on stage in Saint-Tropez 08/08/1970 (Part 1)

From:www.ina.fr

Pink Floyd on stage in Saint-Tropez 08/08/1970 (Part 2)

From:www.ina.fr

Pink Floyd: making of "Brain Damage"

Rare clip of the group in the studio discussing the music, production and themselves. Some great effects by Gilmour!!! (Does not include "Eclipse")




PINK FLOYD - Brain Damage




Brain Damage  lyrics
(Waters)

The lunatic is on the grass.
The lunatic is on the grass.
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs.
Got to keep the loonies on the path.

The lunatic is in the hall.
The lunatics are in my hall.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more.

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

The lunatic is in my head.
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane.
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me.

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

"I can't think of anything to say except...
I think it's marvelous! HaHaHa!"

The Wall interview - song by song - 1979

Transcribed by Jeremy Crampton

Interviewer Tommy Vance.

P I N K F L O Y D -- T H E W A L L (Part I)

Tommy Vance: Where did the idea come from?

Roger Waters: Well, the idea for "The Wall' came from ten years of touring, rock shows, I think, particularly the last few years in '75 and in '77 we were playing to very large audiences, some of whom were our old audience who'd come to see us play, but most of whom were only there for the beer, in big stadiums, and, er, consequently it became rather an alienating experience doing the shows. I became very conscious of a wall between us and our audience and so this record started out as being an expression of those feelings.

TV: But it goes I think a little deeper than that, because the record actually seems to start at the beginning of the character's life.

RW: The story has been developed considerably since then, this was two years ago [1977], I started to write it, and now it's partly about a live show situation--in fact the album starts off in a live show, and then it flashes back and traces a story of a character, if you like of Pink himself, whoever he may be. But initially it just stemmed from shows being horrible.

TV: When you say "horrible" do you mean that really you didn't want to be there?

RW: Yeah, it's all, er, particularly because the people who you're most aware of at a rock show on stage are the front 20 or 30 rows of bodies. And in large situations where you're using what's euphemistically called "festival seating" they tend to be packed together, swaying madly, and it's very difficult to perform under those situations with screaming and shouting and throwing things and hitting each other and crashing about and letting off fireworks and you know?

TV: Uh-huh.

RW: I mean having a wonderful time but, it's a drag to try and play when all that's going on. But, er, I felt at the saem time that it was a situation we'd created ourselves through our own greed, you know, if you play very large venues...the only real reason for playing large venues is to make money.

TV: But surely in your case it wouldn't be economic, or feasible, to play a small venue.

RW: Well, it's not going to be on when we do this show, because this show is going to lose money, but on those tours that I'm talking about; the '75 tour of Europe and England and the '77 tour of England and Europe and America as well, we were making money, we made a lot of money on those tours, because we were playing big venues.

TV: What would you like the audience to do--how would you like the audience to react to your music?

RW: I'm actually happy that they do whatever they feel is necessary because they're only expressing their response to what it's like, in a way I'm saying they're right, you know, that those shows are bad news.

TV: Um.

RW: There is an idea, or there has been an idea for many years abroad that it's a very uplifting and wonderful experience and that there's a great contact between the audience and the perfomrers on the stage and I think that that is not true, I think there've been very many cases, er, it's actually a rather alienating experience.

TV: For the audience?

RW: For everybody.

TV: It's two and a half years since you had an album out and I think people will be interested in knowing how long it's taken you to develop this album.

RW: Right, well we toured, we did a tour which ended I think in July or August '77 and when we finished that tour in the Autumn of that year, that's when I started writing it. It took me a year, no, until the next July, working on myu own, then I had a demo, sort of 90 minutes of stuff, which I played to the rest of the guys and then we all started working on it together, in the October or November of that... October '78, we started working on it.

TV: And you actually ceased recording, I think, in November of this year? [1979]

RW: Yeah. We didn't start recording until the new year, well, till April this year, but we were rehearsing and fiddling about and obviously re-writing a lot. So it's been a long time but we always tend to work very slowly anyway, because, it's difficult.

TV: The first track is "In the Flesh"?

RW: Yeah.

TV: This actually sets up what the character has become.

RW: Yes.

TV: At the end.

RW: Couldn't have put it better myself! It's a reference back to our '77 tour which was called "Pink Floyd in the Flesh."

TV: And then you have a track called "The Thin Ice."

RW: Yeah.

TV: Now, this is I think, at the very very *beginning* of the character; call the character "Pink"...

RW: Right.

TV: ...the very beginning of Pink's [simultaneously] life? 

RW: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. In fact at the end of "In the Flesh" er, you hear somebody shouting "roll the sound effects" da-da-da, and er, you hear the sound of bombers, so it gives you some indication of what's happening. In the show it'll be much more obvious what's going on. So it's a flashback, we start telling the story. In terms of this it's about my generation.

TV: The war?

RW: Yeah. War-babies. But it could be about anybody who gets left by anybody, if you like.

TV: Did that happen to you?

RW: Yeah, my father was killed in the war.

(IN THE FLESH)

(THE THIN ICE)

TV: And then comes "Another Brick in the Wall, Part I." Which is actually about the father who's gone?

RW: Yeah.

TV: Though the father in the album "has flown across the ocean..."

RW: Yeah.

TV: ...now the assumption from listening to that would be that he's gone away to somewhere else.

RW: Yeah, well, it could be, you see it works on various levels--it doesn't have to be about the war--I mean it *should* work for any generation really. The father is also... I'm the father as well. You know, people who leave their families to go and work, not that I would leave my family to go and work, but lots of people do and have done, so it's not meant to be a simple story about, you know, somebody's getting killed in the war or growing up and going to school, etc, etc, etc but about being left, more generally.

TV: "The Happiest Days of our Lives" is, er, a complete condemnation, as I see it, as I've heard it in the album, of somebody's scholastic career.

RW: Um. My school life was very like that. Oh, it was awful, it was really terrible. When I hear people whining on now about bringing back Grammar schools it really makes me quite ill to listen to it. Because I went to a boys Grammar school and although... I want to make it plain that some of the men who taught (it was a boys school) some of the men who taught there were very nice guys, you know I'm not... it's not meant to be a blanket condemnation of teachers everywhere, but the *bad* ones can really do people in--and there were some at my school who were just incredibly bad and treated the children so badly, just putting them down, putting them down, you know, all the time. Never encouraging them to do things, not really trying to interest them in anything, just trying to keep them quiet and still, and crush them into the right shape, so that they would go to university and "do well."

(ANOTHER BRICK: ONE)

(THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES)

(ANOTHER BRICK: TWO)

TV: What about the track "Mother"? What sort of a mother is this mother?

RW: Over-protective; which most mothers are. If you can level one accusation at mothers it is that they tend to protect their children too much. Too much and for too long. That's all. This isn't a portrait of my mother, although some of the, you know, one or two of the things in there apply to her as well as to I'm sure lots of other people's mothers. Funnily enough, lots of people recognize that and in fact, a woman that I know the other day who'd heard the album, called me up and said she'd liked it. And she said that listening to that track made her feel very guilty and she's got herself three kids, and I wouldn't have said she was particularly over-protectice towards her children. I was interested, you know, she's a woman, of well, my age, and I was interested that it had got through to her. I was *glad* it had, you know, if you can... if it means...

(MOTHER)

TV: And then comes the track "Goodbye blue sky." What is actually happening at this stage in Pink's life?

RW: Since we compiled the album I haven't really clearly tried to think my way through it, but I know that this area is very confusing. I think the best way to describe it is as a recap if you like of side one. (This is the start of side two.) And you could look upon "Goodbye blue sky" as a recap of side one. So, yes, it's remembering one's childhood and then getting ready to set off into the rest of one's life.

(GOODBYE BLUE SKY)

TV: And then comes the track "What shall we do now." The assumption this would be when the emergent adult...

RW: That's right. Now that's the track that's not on the album. It was quite nice! In fact I think we'll do it in the show. But it's quite long, and this side was too long, and there was too much of it, it's basically the same as "Empty spaces" and we've put "Empty spaces" where "What shall we do now" is.

TV: Because without those words listening to the album....

RW: Yeah it makes less sense.

TV: Well it's not so much that it makes less sense it just means that there's a period in Pink's life that isn't indicated. I mean he jumps from the recap of side one immediately into "Young lust."

RW: Right. No, he doesn't, he goes into "Empty spaces" and the lyrics there are very similar to the first four lines of "What shall we do now?" But what's different really is this list--"shall we buy a new guitar, drive a more powerful car, work right through the night," you know, and all that stuff.

TV: "Give up meat, rarely sleep, keep people as pets."

RW: Right. It's just about the ways that one protects oneself from one's isolation by becoming obsessed with other people's ideas. Whether the idea is that it's good to drive...have a powerful car, you know, or whether you're obsessed with the idea of being a vegetarian...adopting somebody else's criteria for yourself. Without considering them from a position of really being yourself; on this level the story is extremely simplistic, I hope that on other levels there are less tangible, more effective things that come through. I think it's ok in a show, where you only hear the words, you probably won't hear the words at all the way rock and roll shows get produced.

TV: But they're there obviously if you need them?

RW: Yeah. That's why we didn't go into a great panic about trying to change all the inner bags and things, I think it's important that they're there so that people can read them. Equally I think it's important that people know why they're there, otherwise I agree it's terribly confusing.

TV: And then you come to this track which is called "Young lust." As far as Pink the rock and roll star, and Roger Waters the writer, was there ever a young lust section of your life?

RW: Well, yes, I suppose, actually, yes it did happen to me, that was like me. But I would never have said it, you see, I'd never have come out with anything like that, I was much too frightened. When I wrote this song "Young lust" the words were all quite different, it was about leaving school and wandering around town and hanging around outside porno movies and dirty bookshops and being very interested in sex, but never actually being able to get involved because of being too frightened actually. Now it's completely different, that was a function of us all working together on the record, particularly with Dave Gilmour and Bob Ezrin who, we co-produced the album together, the three of us co-produced it. "Young Lust" is a pastiche number. It reminds me very much of a song we recorded years and years ago called "The Nile Song," [?] it's very similar, Dave sings it in a very similar way. I think he sings "Young Lust" terrific, I love the vocals. But it's meant to be a pastiche of any young rock and roll band out on the road.

(EMPTY SPACES)

(YOUNG LUST)

RW: I think it's great; I love that operator on it, I think she's wonderful. She didn't know what was happening at all, the way she picks up on..I mean it's been edited a bit, but the way she picks up, all that stuff about "is there supposed to be someone else there beside your wife" you know I think is amazing, she really clicked into it straight away. She's terrific!

TV: And then comes "One of My Turns."

RW: Yes, so then the idea is that we've leapt somehow a lot of years, from "Goodbye Blue Sky" through "What Shall we do Now" which doesn't exist on the record anymore, and "Empty Spaces" into "Young Lust" that's like a show; we've leapt into a rock and roll show, somewhere on into our hero's career. And "One of My Turns" is supposed to be his response to a lot of aggro [aggression] in his life and not having ever got anything together, although he's married, well, no he has got things together, but he's been married, and he's just had a... he's just splitting up with his wife, and in response he takes another girl up to his hotel room.

TV: And he really is, "he's got everything but nothing."

RW: He's had it now, he's definitely a bit "yippee" now, and "One of My Turns" is just, you know, him coming in and he can't relate to this girl either, that's why he just turns on the TV, they come into the room and she starts going on about all the things he's got and all that he does is just turn on the TV and sit there, and he won't talk to her.

(ONE OF MY TURNS)

TV: Then comes a period in "Don't Leave Me Now" when he realizes the state that he's in, he still feels, if you like, aggressive, completely depressed, thoroughly paranoid, and very lonely, and but very lonely, to the point of suicide.

RW: Yeah, well, not quite... but yes it is a very depressing song. I love it! I really like it!

TV: There's this line in the song "to beat you to a pulp on a Saturday night."

RW: Yeah.

TV: Now that's just, I don't know how to phrase that, but it really is the depths, if you like, of deprived depravity.

RW: Well a lot of men and women do get involved with each other for lots of wrong reasons, and they do get very aggressive towards each other, and do each other a lot of damage. I, of course, have never struck a woman, as far as I can recall, Tommy, and I hope I never do, but a lot of people have, and a lot of women have struck men as well, there is a lot of violence in relationships often that aren't working. I mean this is obviously an extremely cynical song, I don't feel like that about marriage now.

TV: But you did?

RW: Er, this is one of those difficult things where a small percentage of this is autobiographical, and all of it is rooted in my pown experience, but it isn't my autobiography, although it's rooted within my own experience, like any writing, some of it's me and an awful lot of it is what I've observed.

TV: But there's also a lot of fundamental truth in it.

RW: Well I hope so, if you look and see things and if they ring true, then those are the kind of things, if you're interested in writing songs of books or poems or writing anything then those are the things that you try and write down, because those are the things that are interesting, and those are the things that will touch other people, which is what writing is all about, you know. Some people have a need to write down their own feelings in the hope that other people will recognize them, and derive some worth from them, whether it's a feeling of kinship or whether it makes them happy, or whatever, they will derive something from it.

(DON'T LEAVE ME NOW)

(ANOTHER BRICK: 3)

TV: "Another Brick: 3." "I don't need no arms around around me," he seems to be in a position whereby he's no longer confused, in other words he's more confident. Then comes the track "Goodbye Cruel World." What is happening here?

RW: Well, what's happening is; from the beginning of "One of MY Turns" where the door opens, there, through to the end of side three, the scenario is an American hotel room, the groupie leaves at the end of "One of My Turns" and then "Don't Leave Me Now" he sings which is to anybody, it's not to her and it's not really to his wife, it's kind of to anybody; if you like it's kind of men to women in a way, from that kind of feeling, it's a kind of very guilty song as well. Anyway at the end of that, there he is in his room with his TV and there's that symbolic TV smashing, and then he resurges a bit, out of that kind of violence, and then he sings this loud saying "all you are just bricks in the wall," I don't need anybody, so he's convincing himself really that his isolation is a desirable thing, that's all.

TV: But *how* is he in that moment of time, when he says "goodbye cruel world"?

RW: That's him going catatonic if you like, that final and he's going back and he's just curling up and he's not going to move. That's it, he's had enough, that's the end.

(GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD)

RW: In the show, we've worked out a very clever mechanical system so that we can complete the middle section of the wall, building downwards, so that we get left with a sort of triangular shaped hole that we can fill in bit by bit. Rather than filling it in at the top, there'll be this enormous wall across the auditorium, we'll be filling in this little hole at the bottom. The last brick goes in then, as sings goodbye at the end of the song. That is the completion of the wall. It's been being built in my case since the end of the Second World War, or in anybody else's case, whenver they care to think about it, if they feel isolated or alienated from other people at all, you know, it's from whenever you want.

TV: So it would be accurate to say that at that moment in time he's discovered exactly where he's at, and the wall is complete, ion other words his character, via all the experiences he's had, has finally in his eyes anyway, been completed.

RW: He's nowhere.

TV: And then comes the beginning of side three, which actually starts with a different song than on the sleeve.

RW: Yeah. Bob Ezrin called me up and he said I've just listened to side three and it doesn't work. In fact I think I'd been feeling uncomfortable about it anyway. I thought about it and in a couple of minutes I realised that "Hey You" could conceptually go anywhere, and it would make a much better side if we put it at the front of the side, and sandwiched the middle theatrical scene, with the guy in the hotel room, between an attempt to re-establish contact with the outside world, which is what "Hey You" is; at the end of the side which is, well, what we'll come to. So that's why those lyrics are printed in the wrong place, is because that decision was made very late; I should explain at this point, the reason that all these decisions were made so late was because we'd promised lots of people a long time ago that we would finish this record by the beginning of November, and we wanted to keep that promise.

TV: Well the guy is now behind the wall...

RW: Yeah, he's behind the wall a) symbolically and b) he's locked in a hotel room, with a broken window that looks onto the freeway, motorway.

TV: And now what's he going to do with his life?

RW: Well, within his mind, because "Hey You" is a cry to the rest of the world, you know saying hey , this isn't right, but it's also, it takes a narrative look at it, when it goes... Dave sings the first two verses of it and then there's an instrumental passage and then there's a bit that goes "but it was only fantasy" which I sing, which is a narration of the thing; "the wall was too high as you can see, no matter how he tried he could not break free, and the worms ate into his brain." The worms. That's the first reference to worms...the worms have a lot less to do with the peice than they did a year ago; a year ago they were *very* much a part of it, if you like they were my symbolic representation of decay. Because the basic idea the whole thing really is that if you isolate yourself you decay.

(HEY YOU)

RW: So at the end of "Hey You" he makes this cry for help, but it's too late.

TV: Because he's behind the wall?

RW: Yeah, and anyway he's only singing it to himself, you know, it's no good crying for help if you're sitting in the room all on your own, and only saying it to yourself. All of us I'm sure from time to time have formed sentences in our minds that we would like to say to someone else but we don't say it, you know, well, that's no use, that doesn't help anybody, that's just a game that you're playing with yourself.

TV: And that's what comes up on the track "Nobody Home," the first line being "I've got a little balck book with my poems in."

RW: Yes, exactly, precisely, yeah, after "is there anybody out there" which is really just a mood piece.

TV: So he's sitting in his room with a sort of realisation that he needs help, but he doesn't know how to get it really.

RW: He doesn't really want it.

TV: Doesn't want it at all?

RW: Yeah, well, part of him does, but part of him that's you know, making all his arms and legs, that's making everything work doesn't want anything except just to sit there and watch the TV.

TV: but in this track "Nobody Home" he goes through all the things that he's got: "he's got the obligatory Hendrix perm..." all the things that we know are pretty real in the world of rock and roll.

RW: There are some lines in here that harp back to the halcyon days of Sid Barret, it's partly about all kinds of people I've known, but Sid was the only person I used to know who used elastic bands to keep his boots together, which is where that line comes from, in fact the "obligatory Hendrix perm" you have to go back ten years before you understand what all that's about.

TV: Now when he says I've got fading roots at the very end...

RW: Well, he's getting ready to establish contact if you like, with where he started, and to start making some sense of what it was all about. If you like he's getting ready here to start getting back to side one.

TV: Which he does via the next track which is called "Vera," very much world war II...being born and created if you like in that era again.

RW: This is supposed to be brought on by the fact that a war movie comes on the TV.

TV: Which you can actually hear?

RW: Mentioning no titles or names! Which you can actually hear, and that snaps him back to then and it precedes, what is for me anyway, is the central song on the whole album "Bring the Boys Back Home."

TV: Why?

RW: Well, because it's partly about not letting people go off and be killed in wars, but it's also partly about not allowing rock and roll, or making cars or selling soap or getting involved in biological research or anything that anybody might do, not letting *that* become such an important and "jolly boys game" that it becomes more important than friends, wives, children, other people.

(IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?)

(NOBODY HOME)

(VERA)

(BRING THE BOYS BACK HOME)

TV: So physiologically what stage of the character Pink for the track "Comfortably Numb"?

RW: After "Bring the Boys Back Home" there is a short piece where a tape loop is used; the teachers voice is heard again and you can feel the groupie saying "are you feeling ok" and there's the operator saying, er, "there's a man answering" and there's a new voice introduced at that point and there's somebody knocking on the door saying "come on it's time to go," right, so the idea is that they are coming to take him to the show because he's got to go and perform that night, and they come into the room and they realise something is wrong, and they actually physically bring the doctor in, and "Comfortably Numb" is about his confrontation with the doctor.

TV: So the doctor puts him in such a physiological state that he can actually hit the stage?

RW: Yes, he gives him an injection, in fact it's very specific that song.

TV: "Just a little pinprick"?

RW: Yeah.

TV: "There'll be no more aaaaaaaaaaah!"

RW: Right.

(COMFORTABLY NUMB)

RW: Because they're not interested in any of these problems, all they're interested in is how many people there are and tickets have been sold and the show must go on, at any cost, to anybody. I mean I, personally, have done gigs when I've been very depressed, but I've also done gigs when I've been *extremely* ill, where you wouldn't do any ordinary kind of work.

TV: Because the venue is there and because the act's there...

RW: And they've paid the money and if you cancel a show at short notice, it's expensive.

TV: So the fellow is back in the stage, but he's very...I mean he's vicious, fascist.

RW: Well, here you are, here is the story: I've just remembered; Montreal 1977, Olympic Stadium, 80,000 people, the last gig of the 1977 tour, I, personally, became so upset during the show that I *spat* at some guy in the front row, he was shouting and screaming and having a wonderful time and they were pushing against the barrier and what he wanted was a good riot, and what I wanted was to do a good rock and roll show and I got so upset in the end that I spat at him, which is a very nasty thing to do to anybody. Anyway, the idea is that these kinds of fascist feelings develop from isolation.

TV: And he evidences this from the center of the stage?

RW: This is him having a go at the audience, all the minorities in the audience. So the obnoxiousness of "In the Flesh" and it *is* meant to be obnoxious, this is the end result of that much isolation and decay.

(THE SHOW MUST GO ON)

(IN THE FLESH)

TV: And then seemingly in the track "Run like Hell" this is him telling the audience...?

RW: No...

TV: Is this him telling himself?

RW: No, "Run like Hell," is meant to be *him* just doing another tune in the show. So that's like just a song, part of the performance, yeah...still in his drug-crazed state.

(RUN LIKE HELL)

RW: After "Run like Hell" you can hear an audience shouting "Pink Floyd" on the left-hand side of the stereo, if you're listening in cans, and on the right-hand side or in the middle, you can hear voices going "hammer" they're saying ham-mer, ham-mer...This is, the Pink Floyd audience, if you like, turning into a rally.

TV: And then comes the track "Waiting for the Worms," the worms in your mind are decay, decay is imminent.

RW: "Waiting for the Worms" in theatrical terms is an expression of what happens in the show, when the drugs start wearing off and what real feelings he's got left start taking over again, and he is forced by where he is, because he's been dragged out his real real feelings. Until you see either the show or the film of this thing you won't know why people are shouting "hammer," but the hammer, we've used the hammer as a symbol of the forces of oppression if you like. And the worms are, the thinking part. Where it goes into the "waiting" sections...

TV: "Waiting for the worms to come, waiting to cut out the deadwood"

RW: Yeah, before it goes "waiting to cut out the deadwood" you hear a voice through a loud-hailer, it starts off, it goes "testing, one two," or something, and then it says "we will convene at one o'clock outside Brixton Town Hall," and it's describing the situation of marching towards some kind of National Front rally in Hyde Park. Or anybody, I mean the National Front are what we have in England but it could be anywhere in the world. So all that shouting and screaming...because you can't hear it you see, if you listen very carefully you might hear, er, Lambeth Road, and you might hear Vauxhall Bridge and you might hear the words "Jewboys," er, "we might encounter some Jewboys" it's just me ranting on.

(WAITING FOR THE WORMS)

TV: Who puts him on trial?

RW: He does.

TV: He puts himself on trial?

RW: Yes. The idea is that the drugs wear off and in "Waiting for the Worms" he keeps flipping backwards and forwards from his real, or his original persona if you like, which is a reasonably kind of humane person into this waiting for the worms to come, persona, which is crack!, flipped, and is ready to crush anybody or anything that gets in the way...which is a response to having been badly treated, and feeling very isolated. But at the end of "Waiting for the Worms" it gets too much for him, the oppression and he says "stop." I don't think you can actually hear the word "stop" on the record, or maybe you can, anyway it goes "STOP," yeah, it's very quick, and then he says "I wanna go home, take off this uniform and leave the show," *but* he says "I'm waiting in this prison cell because I have to know, have I been guilty all this time" and then he tries himself if you like. So the judge is part of him just as much as all the other characters and things he remembers...they're all in his mind, they're all memories, anyway, at the end of it all, when his judgement on himself is to de-isolate himself, which in fact is a very good thing.

TV: So now it has really turned full circle.

RW: Almost, yeah. That kind of circular idea is expressed in just snipping the tape at a certain point and just sticking a bit on the front, that tune, you know this "Outside the Wall" tune, at the end.

TV: So the character in "outside the Wall" says "all alone, or in two's...mad buggers wall," and that really is the statement of the album.

RW: And which I have no intention of even beginning to explain.

(THE TRIAL)

(OUTSIDE THE WALL)

TV: Roger, what will it actually be like when we see "The Wall" in concert?

RW: Just like it normally is for a lot of people, who're all packed behind PA systems, and things, you know like, every seat in the house is sold so there's always thousands of people over the sie who can't see anything, and very often in rock and roll shows the sound is dreadful, because, because it costs too much to make it really good, in those kind of halls, you know, the sound will be good mind you in these shows, but the impediments to seeing what's going on and hearing what's going on will be symbolic, rather than real, except for the wall, which will stop people seeing what's going on.

TV: Is the wall going to remain there?

RW: No, not forever.

TV: Who's going to knock it down?

RW: Well, I think we should wait and see about that, for the live show, I think it would be silly really for me to explain to you everything that's going to happen in the live show that we put up, mind you, anybody with any sense listening to the album will be able to spot whereabouts in the show it is that it comes down!

TV: That's the physical wall, what about the physiological wall?

RW: Ah, well, that's another matter, whether we make any in-roads into that or not, is anybody's guess. I hope so.

TV: Roger Waters describing The Wall.

Transcribed by Jeremy Crampton

From: www.pink-floyd.org