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And its possible this perennially popular band has had its popularity underestimated.
He obsessively collects worldwide sales data.
Not salesclaims; salesdata.you’re able to read his51 pages of Pink Floyd sales data here.
The upshot:Pink Floyd has sold more albums worldwide than the Beatles.
Theyd had more than a decade to come up with new songs.
This made the cut?
AfterThe Final Cut, Waters himself left the band, and announced that Pink Floyd was over.
Speaking of disasters,Rolling Stonegave this overwrought, self-important, and almost unlistenable album five stars.
Atom Heart Mother,Atom Heart Mother(1970)
This was the bands fifth album.
For the record, Atom Heart Mother doesnt mean anything; it was taken from a newspaper headline.
And the cow on the cover is a similar piece of absurdism.Its just a cow.All that you might forgive.
But this nonsense begins with faintly recorded horns as an intro into a six-part not-so-magnum opus.
Are there passages that are vaguely interesting?
Yes, but nothing to excuse the excessive length.
(King Crimson came along soon, too.
Its possibly the bands most Spinal Tapy moment.
And in the next section, Funky Dung, the band lays down some hot grooves.
Its a two-disc set; the first disc has extended live versions of the band at its most space-rockinest.
This was part of Waterss contribution.
I would like to dock it a dozen notches for the surpassingly stupid title.
(The Picts were an early British tribe.)
(In 1970, the band also contributed music to Antonionis goofyZabriskie Point.
Theres then another minute of guitar noodling from David Gilmour, so that ditto.
Wright and Gilmour really get into it so much so that they forget to include an actual song.
And the noodling isnt that good.
Julia Dream, single (1968)
After Barrett left the band, Floyd foundered.
(Waterss own school teachers, he said later, were absolute swine.)
The Final Cut,The Final Cut(1983)
LikeThe Wall,The Final Cuttells a story.
Anyway, thats all fine.
But this song is a puzzlement.
Its another hugely bombastic number, the albums penultimate track.
At this point inThe Final Cut,you deeply, deeply never want to hear Roger Waterss voice again.
But thats not what makes this song inexcusable.
/ Would you sell your story toRolling Stone?
Hey, Rog: Its a small sacrifice.
Lie back and think of England.
So occasionally you get songs like this one, where they need a piece of narrative-driving.
A transition number, 30 seconds long.
Pinks awaiting trial, the poor guy.
And if thats not enough, the whole song is accompanied by a track of dogs howling.
Unfortunately it derives from a pretty lite guitar riff and some Deep Purpley keyboard mewling.
Its not clear why the fadeout lasts 30-plus seconds.
The Dogs of War,A Momentary Lapse of Reason(1987)
151.
But I dont understand the narrators voice here.
Is he a dog?
I didnt get that from part one.
What this song is really about, however, is songwriting royalties.
Now lets look atAnimalsDogs, which is credited to Waters/Gilmour, andlasts for 16 minutes.
Outside the Wall,The Wall(1979)
This is the last track ofThe Wall.
After all the bombast comes this soft little ditty.
But as the last track of the record its pretty lame.
In the film it runs over the credits and its import is lost.
The Second World War was a terrible event in world history, and took a devastating toll.
This song is an acknowledgment that there were reasons for the war.
(Confidential to Roger W.: Constructions like Take heed went out with Keats.)
Gilmour noodles guitars in the middle, with a poorly recorded bass interfering.
The third part is mostly keyboard, mixed horribly.
The band actually used to play this nonsense live.
Part of the reason it doesnt work for me is the anonymity of the players.
If this is supposed to be organic, theres no personality to the music.
A horrifyingly bad Wright composition from the bands second album.
The backing vocals are a parody of themselves.
(I didnt mean to let them take my soul!)
One of the problems withThe Wallis that its really not clear who the bad guys are.
WhydidPink let anyone take his soul?
Boy, was he going to be surprised!
This is Nick Masons contribution, including lots of flute played by his then wife.
And heres the thing.
Why not have each member of the band, you know, contribute something to each song?
Passion Play, anyone?
Larks Tongues in Aspic?
No other album close to that rarefied air has so many songwriting credits from one person.
Lets say CBS had a cap on publishing points that took it down by 10 cents.
Case in point is this lazy Wright/Gilmour composition.
Wright, supposedly the bands secret musical weapon, rarely produced an actual good, you know, song.
Its painfully plain how simple both the chords and progressions are.
The lyrics are all about ancient bonds and gilded cages.
This feels aimless and uninventive.
The last song, Louder Than Words, is a real song, and isnt terrible.
I liked how Waters wrested the symbol away and tried to make a statement about personal isolation.
Anyway, here, Pink gets a groupie and proceeds to get a little weird.
One of the Few,The Final Cut(1983)
Another fragment.
Waterss hero this time is a war veteran who returns to be a teacher.
Pinks behind the wall, asking for help.
In the film it ends with the highly cinematic scene of Bob Geldof shaving his chest.
It took a while before his crushed friends recognized their former bandmate.
Mudmen,Obscured by Clouds(1972)
A Wright/Gilmour instrumental.
Theres a touch or two of drama, and a not-all-that-interesting funny guitar noise.
Syd Barrett grew up in Cambridge, which was relatively protected from the damage the war did to England.
He knew both Gilmour and Waters from a young age.
His disarming off-kilter creativity early on was evidenced in things like a handcrafted book he titledFart Enjoy.
This is one of his second-tier songs.
Its all fine but he could do a lot better.
Wearing the Inside Out,The Division Bell(1994)
Another insubstantial, forgettable track onDivision Bell.
Waterss dark sarcasm was looking better all the time.
And then the pompous synthesized horns kick in.
Repeat, for almost seven minutes.
Wrights contribution to the second disc ofUmmagummashows off his limits.
He was a pianist, and a keyboardist, there can be no doubt.
Wright would later write a couple or three good songs one of them a significant track onTDSOTM.
But he had no business writing 15-minute on-record epics.
And one of the Cambridge boys in the band should have told him how to spell Sisyphus.
Hes singing in a much-lower register, and his voice loses some of its power.
Dramatic Theme,More(1969)
Just what it says.
Way too much echo on his voice.
We can see from the start this will be a much less subtle (!)
And thats before we get Waters, full-volume, shrieking, Whatever happened to the postwar dream?
On record, though, it comes across just as six minutes of meandering.
One of the Spinal Tap ironies is that they werent that good at it!
It is perfect, however, in one regard.
Its a perfect mediocre song to fill out six-plus minutes on a mediocre album.
Paint Box, single (1967)
The B-side to the bands last Barrett single, Apples and Oranges.
Written and sung by Wright, its not terrible, though his voice isnt strong enough to carry it.
It gets really irritating when the song takes on a sort of prancing rhythm.
This was the only unreleased track on it.
One of the most distinctive things about Floyd at the time was how haphazard their sound was.
(Think of Anyone for Tennis, on CreamsWheels of Fire.)
Poles Apart,The Division Bell(1994)
This is a song about being poles apart!
Again, we have the droney sounds with some Gilmourian ruminations up top, again going on for minutes.
Docked ten notches for its excessively dreary (8:45!!)
length, even by Pink Floyd standards.
The Narrow Way,Ummagumma(1969)
This was Gilmours contribution toUmmagumma, in three parts.
(These guys and their suites.)
Nothing holds these three horrid-to-mediocre pieces of music together.
But poor EMI sure put out a lot of shitty Pink Floyd albums early on.
Thats something Pink Floyd could have written a song about.
(The hovering albatross takes its chances / We complain about everything except our advances.
If,Atom Heart Mother(1970)
More of Pink Floyds incoherent aesthetics.
Most people will remember only the overdone echoes on the wordcloser.
Gilmour plays some wrenching guitar, but it doesnt seem like his heart is in it.
Green Is the Colour,More(1969)
An early Waters vocal track, in a tentative falsetto.
(Morewas the first of two Barbet Schroeder films the band contributed a soundtrack to.)
The kind thing to say is that the band was still trying to find its voice.
Its about a male French college student who goes to Paris on an adventure.
He gets into some wild stuff and then runs off to Ibiza with a female friend.
Threesomes result, but so does heroin addiction, and things dont end well.
Schroeder went on to direct some U.S. commercial fare, includingSingle White FemaleandReversal of Fortune.
Its another one of the default, mid-tempo, mid-register Gilmour numbers.
The trick of having the backup singers defiantly repeat the title words over and over doesnt provide actual energy.
Words by Polly Samson, Gilmours then-fiancee.
But thats as far as it goes with all but a few of the songs hes left behind.
Quicksilver,More(1969)
Incidental eerie organ music from theMoresoundtrack.
This is basically just a Gilmour solo song on a Pink Floyd album.
(His co-writer contributed just lyrics.)
Dont Leave Me Now,The Wall(1979)
A nicely de-romanticized love plaint from Pink.
(I need you, babe / To put through the shredder / In front of my friends.)
Roger Waters is a talented guy, but he has an awful voice.
Around this point inThe Wall, listeners could be forgiven for finding it trying.
And so we get this dancehall-y hairball from Waters, who almost sounds like Harry Nilsson here.
(Minus the four-octave range and ability to pitch.)
Where the band got the spelling (the town is Saint-Tropez) is the least of its problems.
A weird vocal, machine-y thing.
Goes nowhere but nowhere, and stay tuned for Part 2.
And damned if that unmemorable album didnt sell 10 million worldwide.
A Pillow of Winds,Meddle(1971)
Hey Dave and Rog: Whats this about eiderdown?
I knew Syd Barrett.
Syd Barrett was a friend of mine.
And youre no Syd Barrett.
In Alan ParkersPink Floyd The Wall, its set against the films grimmest and saddest scenes.
More Blues,More(1969)
Its an actual blues, a first for the band.
It lasts for barely more than two minutes.
Fat Old Sun,Atom Heart Mother(1970)
David Gilmours contribution to the second side ofAHM.
The acoustic strumming at the beginning made it sound like what it was, a forced duty.
A Spanish Piece,More(1969)
Just what it says, with some additional dialogue from theMoresoundtrack.
Reprised, without the question mark, on the fourth side.
Odd that during the recording process no one suggested they be improved.
Keep Talking,The Division Bell(1994)
Another minor radio hit.
Theres an attempt to get some churning energy going, but it doesnt work.
More ominous backup singers.
The electronic voice you hear is that of Stephen Hawking.
Gilmour actually heard the words in a cell-phone commercial, and thought they were neat.
Hazy were the visions overplayed.
He wasnt there yet.
Cirrus Minor,More(1969)
Wow, thats Latin!Arma virumque cano, boys!
Birds chirping, then some very serious sounding vocals and some simple organ chords.
Flaming,The Piper at the Gates of Dawn(1967)
Eiderdown and unicorns.
Heres where you really have to buy into Barretts dandelion whimsy.
One of the inexplicable parts of Barretts hemi-demi-semi-genius is that the result is not something laughable.
Note the quizzical song title, which isnt referenced in the song.
Crying Song,More(1969)
A pretty, if forgettable, Waters song from theMoresoundtrack.
Hes on thin ice, people!
Remember a Day,A Saucerful of Secrets(1968)
An early Wright song.
You get everything here: pretty piano, intoned lyrics, some mild psychedelic freakout.
Its all pretty silly.
Mason didnt play drums.
Said Wright: [Producer] Norman [Smith] gave up on the second album.
He was forever saying things like, You cant do twenty minutes of this ridiculous noise.
Ah, but they could.
The real issue was the tonal discrepancies.
Corporal Clegg onSecretsis a badly conceived, poorly executed dance-hall-style goof.
There you get a sense of the band improvising within the different sections.
As a studio recording it feels pointless.
The Trial,The Wall(1979)
Waters finally goes full-on Joel Grey or is it Angela Lansbury?
And over and over and over again.
Originally titled Lets Roll Another One, a no-go topic at the time.
Restating his thesis, Waters is telling us about the difficult life of the returning veteran.
This is a purty little ballad, sung delicately, with some actual bite in the lyrics.
Theres no wind in my soul / And Ive grown old.
(That was a pretty taboo rock-star subject in 1972.)
At the same time, these goofballs were working onThe Dark Side of the Moon!
I dont understand the title either.
Some lovely guitar sounds, though.
Done after the release ofPiper; Barrett was already on his downward slide.
It was almost his last contribution to the group, at the end of 1967.
But there is something real and engaging about the chorus.
Up the Khyber,More(1969)
Something like chillin piano jazz, with some hot organ overlaid.
And Nick Mason hitting the skins in the background.
Ibiza Bar,More(1969)
Another good rocker from the movie soundtrack.
So give it a listen if you want to take a step back into the past.
This is a Barrett song, so it has more energy and melody than most Floyd excursions like this.
But also listen to Wrights contribution, coming between the four- and five-minute marks.
This is not a dynamic player.
I know I sound a little puckish when it comes to Pink Floyds pre-TDSOTMwork.
But compare this to, say, Ive Seen All Good People, by Yes.
In the Flesh,The Wall(1979)
Now we reprise the opening song.
In the film, Pinks disintegration is complete.
The equation of rock star as fascist dictator doesnt really work for me.
Wear tight pants and prance around?)
The casually strummed acoustic guitar and his natural vocals contrast too sharply with the electronics that will follow.
Fletcher, incidentally, was Waterss fathers middle name.
And people say he wasnt fun at parties.
This isnt a terrible song.
This live workout isnt convincing for a good part of the beginning.
You know how, in Within You Without You, its really exciting when the tabla kicks in?
This isnt like that.
The energy picks up four or five minutes in though.
Oh, by the way / Which ones Pink?
is, in Floyd legend, an actual line an industry weasel had asked the band.
The soundscape here in its own way is as brutal as that of Welcome to the Machine.
And its funny all the way through; choose your own favorite line.
(Mine is Were so happy we can hardly count.)
And docked another 20 for the fucking irony.
He was still searching for a songwriting voice which lord knows he eventually found.
But theres a rockin groove here at the beginning, and then things go south quickly.
Still, for Floyd at the time, really not a bad song.
Has drama and force and isnt terribly produced.
Cymbaline,More(1969)
A standout from theMoresoundtrack, which works well in the party scene.
But its a focused and memorable chorus, and sung powerfully.
Ends with two minutes of noodling.
Not a subtle endeavor, but Im not going to criticize it.
Jugband Blues,A Saucerful of Secrets(1968)
Barretts a tough call.
But it has to be said that therewaspromise.
Where could he have gone?
Jugband Blues is his one contribution to the bands second album.
Less jaunty, overall, than most of his other works.
Syd Syd Syd, we hardly knew ye.
The Gold Its in the …Obscured by Clouds(1972)
Heavens!
An actual guitar riff.
This could be a (second- or third-tier) Kinks song.
Am I the only person who thinks Mason is a weak drummer?
This song tries to rock, but it drifts a bit.
Main Theme,More(1969)
This really isnt terrible, and it could be.
Theres almost something reminiscent of Bernard HerrmannsTaxi Driveropening.
The Nile Song,More(1969)
Pink Floyd rocks out!
(Pink Floyd didnt do tight.
Gilmour kicks ass in the last minute or so.
What Waters is talking about I have no idea.
Nice to hear Gilmour working it on out.
This track is one of the more enjoyable extended Floyd offerings on record.
See also:Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.
Lucifer Sam,The Piper at the Gates of Dawn(1967)
Another fun bashy track.
That cats something I cant explain another imagistic Barrett vision that for some reason stays with you.
The first two tracks ofPiperaregroovy indeed.
Had it ended after six minutes it would have been an effective reprise.
Someone really needed to take Richard Wrights clavinet away from him, too.
Youve probably seen theWHYHcover with the two guys shaking hands, one of them on fire.
Its agreat iconic image.
Meanwhile, Richard Wrights contributions to the band had become marginal.
(Note that it had been two-and-a-half years sinceAnimalshad come out.)
Amazingly, the band hired Wright back as a session player for the shows.
At the end theres a short reprise of Breathe in the Air.
Wright adds some vocals to the chorus, bringing a necessary everyman blandness to the production.
How thatMeddleDark Sidetransition happened is one of the great mysteries in rock-and-roll history.
There are six normal songs onDark Side, and each one has a coherent point.
Floyds album originally hit number one (in the U.S.) that summer for just one week.
Worldwide,its total is 43 million, making it the second-largest selling album of all time, afterThriller.
This ten-note riff gets beaten into submission, as do the nine words of the lyrics.
Upped ten notches for historical value.
Gilmour said good-bye to Waters but kept the name and successfully beat back Waterss legal challenges.
But they each sold more than 10 million units!
Dogs,Animals(1977)
Animalsis a difficult album.
(Record buyers agree with me; its by far the poorest seller of the bands classic period.)
All that said, over the years Ive come to think its afailedalbum rather than abadone.
Its ambitious and probably a bit misconceived, but with many powerful moments.
(Their version was pricks, assholes, and pussies, respectively.)
And you have to give Waters credit forhavinga cosmology, much less this uncompromising and socially relevant one.
Anyway, first up is Dogs.
Beyond that, theres no sense that a talented pair of outside ears was here to help them.)
The guitar solos, the voice echo, the funny synth sounds they all sound a little bald.
But maybe its just because they are set against the baldness of Waterss lyrics.
I respect that Waters was trying to make a Big Statement; it just doesnt cohere.
Whos going through the maze?
I thought rats went through mazes.
I do thank Roger for not resorting to dog-barking noises until about the five-minute mark.
With Waters, at this point, thats restraint.
The sound is open, but I wouldnt call it spacious.
The keyboards set an eerie scene, and Gilmours initial guitar riff is arresting.
The feel becomes almost mechanical, but without the grandeur of Welcome to the Machine.
What the hell is that?
Yoda as a drama queen?
And even in non-reversed English thats not a particularly cutting statement.
Gilmour works it on out in the closing minutes of this 11-plus-minute track.
Meek and obedient / You follow the leader.
(We get it, Rog.
The song is called Sheep, for chrissakes.)
Things get a bit tedious in the middle four minutes or so.
(Thats how I read it, anyway.)
(Sometimes you actually feel for Waters when it comes to his lazy bandmates.)
Some people like it.
Nobody Home,The Wall(1979)
A strong, slightly overlookedWallsongs.
Waterss voice doesnt do much for it, its lugubrious, and it overdoes the fly to echo.
Waterss voice is always better when Gilmours is in the mix as well, as here.
That said, its a very pretty song that does its job well on this terrific record.
He died in 06 of lung cancer.
And again I dont want to be glib.
Credited to Nick Mason.
Theres something majestic here in the verses.
Note that Wright has a songwriting credit here, but I bet it was the chorus.
Any Colour You Like,The Dark Side of the Moon(1973)
A Gilmour/Wright/Mason jam.
Here again Wright makes his mark.
Radically constructed; and the intro and outro into Brain Damage are brilliant.
Young Lust,The Wall(1979)
Great sound in this Gilmour track.
(Waters did the words.)
So the singles aesthetics are somewhat unstable.
Theres apretty radical videothat goes with it.
I dont know if this is as good asHappy Jack.
I dont know if its as good asIn the Year 2525.
The first two minutes of Interstellar Overdrive are as good as it gets.
The bass is great.
The various guitar tracks are great.
Barrett, meanwhile, was growing more erratic.
A film clip, now available on YouTube, shows himwandering around a garden on acid.
But the rest of his life was getting darker.
Gilmour steps up, too.
Its bigandfocused, grandandrocking.
The brilliant synth wizard Richard Wright programmed the notes and transformed them into this spectacular just joking.
It was actually Waters and Gilmour.
Stories differ as to why.
Barretts classic early psychedelia lyrics Youll lose your mind and play, etc., etc.
Theres awonderful black-and-white videoto accompany it, too.
This is a plainly electronic album, but much of what we hear sounds human, organic.
(Amassivehit single.)
Asked to wail, wail she did.
Whos going to argue with her?
Lets do the math, sticking with our three-cents-per-album-per-track supposition.
The Great Gig in the Sky might well have delivered Wright $1.3 million in songwriting royalties.
This was an unaccountable pop hit in the United States.
The single is as unconventional a hard-rock record as the era produced.
The ride back into the main beat is a thrill and a half.
This is a model assemblage sonically; who doesnt get excited when the guitars get into gear?
(Pigs Might Flysays that jazz ace Lee Ritenour is playing on the track, incidentally.)
And theres some insane stuff going on in the electronics in the back.
The endingSweeney Toddlike whistle works fabulously.
(It helps theyre multi-tracking his singing.)
(This is the song that begins The lunatic is on the grass.)
Besides fitting in with the vicissitudes-of-modern-life theme Waters had going, the track is another homage to Barrett.
And with an organ fanfare, another of Wrights best moments, we get to the end.
(All of its dark, really.)
Impressive that, nearly 45 years on, the albums foundation and themes have only strengthened, and deepened.
To dismiss them simply as technically limited is philistine.
(A backward compliment, true.)
The beginning here is as dramatic as anything Pete Townshend was coming up with at the time.
And it really worked live.
(Not sure who told Syd domine needed an accent, though.)
Unfortunately, Barretts beginning was his end.
By the time the band had finished its first album, it was obvious Barrett was damaged.
He completely disappeared into himself, a friend said.
But that couldnt happen.
Waters bought into it.
(Again, this was the 1970s, and it was a pretty radical fusion.)
Someone came up with the idea of adding the kids chorus.
The single spent four weeks at number one.
A good part ofThe Wallis labored; Ezrin and Waters had given themselves an impossible job.
Gilmour is MVP for the killer guitar outro.
Later, the pings come back, leading into quite a keyboard fanfare by Wright.
Im upping this over theAnimalsjams, even though this is not as well produced, for historical value.
I call him Gerald / Hes getting rather old, but hes a good mouse.
This is a love song.
Youre the kind of girl who fits into my world, Barrett sings, hopefully.
This is how I live, Barrett is saying.
Can you join me in it?
A second solo effort was even more difficult to birth.
When a burst of royalties came in, Barrett would appear back in London to spend his money.
Friends said he mostly just watched television and put on weight.
He died in 2006, reportedly from pancreatic cancer.
Instead, they are a mechanical scream.
(Its another one of Gilmours most amazing vocal performances.)
One of the great parts of the Pink Floyd story is how Waters became everything hed written about.
He acted out his bildungsroman even as he wrote it.
He fired Wright, whom hed known since he was a teen.
He fell out with Hipgnosis, the design firm that had done the album covers sinceSaucerful of Secrets.
That, Ms. Morissette, is what you call ironic.
This meditation on friendship, madness, and what am I forgetting?
oh, yes, the music industry encourages examination and revels in its own over- and undertones.
Everything that Pink Floyd is at its best is right here, the opening 12-plus minutes.
(In the end, thats what would be lacking inAnimals.)
Gilmour, at his best, starts out soft; his solos carefully dramatize themselves.
Things never get boring theres even a terrific blues solo.
Theres really no comparison.
But for what the band did, and for what the band heeded, he was nonpareil.
The song itself, of course, is Waterss most full-bodied tribute to Barrett.
But you cant forget the first chord either, ominous yet graceful.
Again, someone Waters?
And then he starts playing guitar!
The roots of the bands breakup are here, too.
One never had the sense that Gilmour liked stardom, or reveled in it.
(I dont know if Ive ever seen a picture of him wearing anything but a T-shirt.)
So far on, everyones basically forgotten the sleight of hand he pulled off.
Gilmour remains implacable and a star in much of the world.
(One of his solo albums was a No.
AfterThe Final Cut, Roger Waters pressed on with a series of cranky, crackpot rock operas.
The years have mellowed Waters somewhat; he is older and even handsomer now.
And yet, he can probably still walk down most streets in the world and not be recognized.
He actually seems happy now.
We should have his problems.
