[Music]

now

[Music]

so

[Music]

on the 13th of november 1971 pink floyd

released their fifth studio album medal

in the years since the record has been

overshadowed by the exceptional success

of dark side of the moon wish you were

here and the wall

however

despite its more obscure status

medal is itself a remarkable piece of

work medal's been lost along the way

it's probably the the album from that

period

that most deserves a reappraisal for the

sort of the slightly more curious

slightly more you know inquisitive fan

it's always been up there as sort of an

important work for echoes alone the

sheer ambition and scale of that track

it deserves to be retrieved

[Music]

this film re-examines the album how it

came into being and the music itself

[Music]

the seeds of pink floyd were sown in

cambridge in the early 1960s when sid

barrett and roger waters became friends

however this relationship would not

blossom into a band until the pair moved

to london

[Music]

pink floyd initially formed in london as

a five piece but the group eventually

solidified with sid barrett on vocals

and guitar rick wright on keyboards nick

mason on drums and roger waters on base

despite starting as an r b group the

band quickly gravitated towards the

newly emerging mid 60s sound 66 67 when

psychedelia started it's like coming out

of the black and white

days of the 50s into the colored you

know technicolor days of the 60s which

is actually what it feels like now

because

suddenly people wearing colored clothes

and doing outrageous things

a lot of people in the british

psychedelic movement in the 60s had

grown up with the r b boom with the

mersey beast and so forth the sound that

really defined pop at the beginning of

that decade but as they get decade war

on they suddenly began to realize

there's more to music than just strictly

three minutes happy happy verse chorus

those chords songs in the charts and

once they realized that everything began

to take off american psychedelia

developed principally on the west coast

of the us with bands like jefferson

airplane love and the birds defining the

sound

however in the uk the scene was

distinctly different i suppose one of

the significant differences is that it

was more

blues-based initially a lot of it came a

lot of people are the players and people

like eric clapton for instance who went

on to be with cream that come out that

whole sort of blues tradition and i

think one of the points there was just

the sort of sort of jamming aspects of

those things the pivotal album in the uk

was really i suppose what was revolver

um you know with tomorrow never knows

and very strongly in the fact about

george harrison that sort of takes on

the kind of eastern

influence

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]
[Music]

i think pink floyd has seen very much

from the outside as being a part of that

kind of british psychedelic movement

obviously sid barrett experimented a lot

with hallucinogenics that was a very big

part of of what revolver the beatles

revolver was about and i think there was

an element of that in floyd's music some

of the it wasn't standard blues or

country or folk it didn't tend to lean

on that as much as a lot of the american

psychedelic bands did

it was it was seen as being very out

there very left field and so i think the

way they looked and the way they played

got them bracketed in as a psychedelic

band their musical and lyrical

sensibility very much chimed

with the times

being kind of

non-conformist experimental

trying to expand the the consciousness

and expand the parameters of what's

possible in music i suppose these sonic

experiments were further influenced by

the musical collective amm

who pink floyd supported at soho's

marquee club a m were quite an

astonishing group they started musical

life in the mid 60s about 1965 1966

and they were this kind of

very very free playing for one of a

better word jazz band who were doing all

kinds of sort of you know

out there experiments they were playing

with saws and tuning in radios on stage

the guitarist would run you know ball

bearings up and down the frets the

guitar

[Music]

it's about expanded song forms and

improvisation and

i think there are specifics as well i

mean it said that uh that sid barrett

stole the idea of running ball bearings

down the neck of his uh guitar uh from

from amm you listen to early pink floyd

where they're kind of where they start

having these kind of solid jams that

were almost like approaching the states

of white noise you can see where amm

would have been hugely influential

this influence would lead to extended

pieces such as interstellar overdrive a

song that has been credited with setting

pink floyd on a path that would

eventually lead them to albums like

metal i think you could say that the

very roots of the sort of pink floyd's

progressive rock it does come from

interstellar overdrive that's the

obvious track

[Music]

so

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

if you listen to things like atom heart

mother and echoes

i think insular overdrive was obviously

the starting point

for

you know these sort of long epic

sort of

instrumental pieces the idea of this

long instrumental ramble

is is really where it's the roots of

where all pink floyd's longer and

probably better instrumental rambles

came from a lot later on pink floyd's

underground reputation grew to such an

extent

that eventually they were signed by emi

however their first single was not to be

as confrontational as some of their live

material

[Music]
[Music]

arnold lane was the first hit single for

the pink floyd it fitted into what was

going on at the time and it didn't fit

into what was going on at the time there

was a certain darkness net eeriness and

eccentricity to it it had a real edge

what the floyd seemed to be doing was

taking the classic rock and roll or pop

structure musically and playing around

with it they were missing with your head

by knocking it around so you ended up

with something slightly skewed with but

something that still had enough in there

to appeal to the masses very clever

balance yeah it was a different thing

but i think

they were lucky or they were clever to

actually produce two singles like that

because it really did lift them out of

just being kind of a cult band with

arnold lane and their second single see

emily play gaining chart success pink

floyd entered abbey road studios to

record their first album part of the

gates of dawn when we recorded that that

was the very first album

that i was going to record with the pink

floyd but as the

songs came up i suppose

as far as i was concerned i i can say it

was in intrigue you know i was i was

intrigued with the

because i knew nothing about psychedelia

anyway i mean i'm a jazz musician and of

course i just not long finished

recording

three years with the with the beatles

so uh to certainly uh not suddenly but

to to start to record this psychedelic

uh psychedelia the songs etc

that's the only word i can find is in

intrigue piper at the gates of dawn was

released on the 5th of august 1967.

to this day it is still seen as a true

classic of british psychedelia you could

well describe piper at the gates of dawn

as the archetypal um british

you know psychedelic album more so in a

way than sergeant pepper which is all

belongs somewhere else all together

really but i think with with pipe at the

gates of dawn

there is this kind of

you know this is rawness this is sort of

bizarre mixture on the one hand a pop

novelty i mean he's thinking this chart

says he's got the hendrix at the same

time pop novelty plus this kind of like

raging sort of psychedelic white noise

but what made piper at the gates of dawn

stand apart from so much at the time was

that it was eccentric

it was significant it was eloquent and

all these were combined through

sid barrett who was a conduit for so

much that was going on so much it was

dark so much that was almost unnerving

and a little bit difficult to comprehend

i still find piper that goes to dawn to

be um very impressive creation and we're

talking about a record that was made

nearly 40 years ago still stands

no no question about that at all you

know it is it's still in absolutely a

class of its own

however despite the success of piper at

the gates of dawn all was not well

within pink floyd

during 1967 sid barrett appeared to

suffer drug-induced mental breakdown

which resulted in ever increasingly

erratic behavior

[Music]

after a disastrous american tour the

band were forced to employ the services

of another guitarist to supplement

barrett's now minimal contributions to

live performances
they called on david gilmour an old

cambridge friend of waters and barrett

however despite this attempt to sustain

the group in january 1968 sid barrett

left pink floyd

[Music]

i feel that the one album that sid

barrett did with pink floyd piper

against the dorm plus his two solo

albums really encapsulate brilliantly

what that man was all about in a certain

sense of his life

four years three albums that's all it is

but it really does still capture the

imagination because this is sid barrett

i think when david gilmour came along

and replaced sid barron after his uh

breakdown

pink floyd transformed completely you

might also talk about it as a sort of

direct transition from childhood to

adulthood i mean the whole tone the

whole pulse of pink lloyd changes

completely a lot of things to do with

you know the david gilmour's style he

has this kind of very languid very sort

of liquid sort of approach to playing

guitar almost like heavy eyelid little

what's hair very very slow very laid

back but also very very assured very

stately and i think it's at this point

that pink floyd take on certain heirs

and graces they become a different kind

of group what gilmore brought to the

table was a musicality that sid didn't

have he'd been in a gilmore had been in

a covers band in cambridge you know he

could sing anything they were doing four

seasons sam and dave covers chuck berry

he had a great great voice and he was a

really really good proficient kind of

traditional guitar player tradition in

the sense of blues playing when dave

gilmore arrived of course i mean he was

like a breath of fresh air

after sid barrett you know the

difficulty of

dealing with sid

about

that

david was as i said you know

he was on a more

uh

musical appreciation of what i was

trying to achieve in terms of

of the more melodic

substance sid's departure threw the

group into turmoil not least because he

had been the chief songwriter and front

man

after the dust had settled it was roger

waters who had become the band's new

creative focus the thing we bought is he

was the most and probably the most

obviously ambitious member of the group

he's probably the least musical but he

was the one with the drive and with the

ideas and he wanted to be successful he

wanted to be in a famous rock band

and he sort of saw sid's departure as

somebody had to fill that gap he was a

more forceful personality than rick

wright and so he stepped up and his

early songs aren't really very good but

he was at least coming up with songs and

coming up with ideas it was no surprise

to me that uh roger would actually take

over

the leadership

of pink floyd as it was then i did

always enjoy roger's songs purely

because he was so easy to work with any

much easier than said you know to get my

ideas across to him despite barrett's

disintegrating mental state pink floyd

had begun to record their second studio

album

after sid's departure they set about

completing what would eventually become

a source full of secrets the sauce for

the secrets is a real mixed bag there's

half barrett's on some of it he's got

he's on one track jug band blues he's

supposedly playing guitar guitar on some

others there's stuff on there as well

that's left over from piper at the gates

of dawn so it's not a very cohesive

record

and also gilmore had very very little

input on it he was basically doing he

was playing on songs that had already

been for the most part had already been

written despite the unsatisfactory

elements on the album it does contain a

song that would point in the direction

of some of pink floyd's best work set

the controls for the heart and sun is

the standout track on there because in a

way that really does point the way

forward to metal atom heart mother metal

and eventually obviously dark the dark

side the moon um it's got that kind of

sound which we associate now with that

sort of late 60s progressive rock space

rock whatever you want to call it

[Music]

the actual lyrics are not so important

so when we sit back the lyrics are very

important but now the lyrics were not so

important but the musical structure was

more important it kind of moved um pink

from basically from inner space from the

reflection of inner space to you know

the re the real uh and substantial

physical thing that was happening

outside them which was the exploration

of outer space it's a very atmospheric

piece of music it's very much roger

waters dominates completely

but you can you can hear where they're

heading in the 70s this is this is like

a dry run

[Music]

it's a kind of a follow-on really from

intercell overdrive i mean they've

already initially got this kind of rough

outline of a sort of what you might call

prague rock eventually but a sort of

intermediary thing which is like space

rock um it's where they kind of really

it's almost like taking all the kind of

energies that they sort of built up and

use them as sort of rocket booster to go

to some new place to get away from this

kind of

the sort of rootsier aspects of

psychedelia you know the kind of um

you know the the flow control the folk

influence the blues influence and really

take the music somewhere else as the

1960s drew to a close so did the

idealism that had defined psychedelia

what was left musically began to mutate

into what has become known as

progressive rock what we call

progressive rock is basically rock music

that's made after sgt pepper i think

sergeant pepper is the point that

changes it's the idea that suddenly a

pop song didn't have to be three and a

half minutes long that you could do this

you could go here you could go there and

a load of bands british and american

bands are very much inspired by that

that was the first album where

the studio was used as an instrument

where avant-garde ideas classifiers were

brought in where you had orchestras

where you had this where you had that

where you had the kitchen sink

and so i mean i think you know the

progressive rock probably started with

sergeant pepper originally it developed

from from from a need to do something

counter to what other bands were doing

you know to get away from the 12 bars

and stop sounding like americans

and and you'll find that most of that

progressive rock of that time is is

almost unbearably english

another album to define the genre and

dramatically influence other progressive

artists was king crimsons in the court

of the crimson king king crimson's uh

1969 album in the court of the crimson

king

was the sort of main jumping off point

of progressive rock

[Music]

crimson

[Music]

it's the first commercially extremely uh

impactful very big

album

it's also a unique record it's never

been repeated um it's nothing like that

record

and it's nothing like anything else

around it

but they say that it's the first

progressive record would be simplifying

the case you could argue that king

crimson were just taking ideas out of

the sort of cultural ether that the idea

of experimenting with the classical

form and and content that the beatles

had already begun upon and the the moody

blues had been experimenting with the

use of um

early prototype synthesizers like the

melotron to create orchestral voicings

in the sort of rock field the influence

of jazz the influence of music concrete

and of avant-garde experimental ideas

and the sort of the

expansion of the lyrical palette to

include myths and legends and

classical illusions

so king crimson very much sort of

coalesced all these various ideas that

have been floating around within

psychedelic music essentially before

that at the beginning of the 1970s the

genre grew in popularity with bands like

yes genesis emerson lake and palmer and

jethro tull defining the movement's

obsession with expanding the traditional

rock song we didn't have any

restrictions so it was really well if a

piece lasts 20 minutes so be it

we never went out of our way and i don't

think the other bands did to write extra

long pieces but if that happened that

was fine and also there was a very

strong element of of elitism

you know we
most of the guys thought they were

pretty hot stuff it was taken to to an

extraordinary degree of of

um

somewhat

pompous

um

and overblown

although i love i loved all that at the

time you know i'll get shot for saying

this

there has long been debate over whether

pink floyd are part of the prog rock

movement of the early 70s and whether

their next three albums including medal

represent their progressive period they

fitted into it more by accident than by

design i mean you know none of them were

virtuoso musicians at that point um

probably least of all nick mason and

roger waters whereas in yes you have

bill bruford who was a jazz trained

drama and you had chris squire who was a

very proficient bass player floyd were

much more traditional it's very

blues-based they're not they weren't

virtuosos so i think that in a way that

stopped them getting becoming too

technical
so the fact that the songs go on a long

time and have a lot of time changes and

so on is why they get why they're often

lumped in as progressive rock i don't

think it's again i don't think it's a

tag that would sit very comfortably with

them with the band themselves people

argue a lot about whether you can call

pink floyd progressive rock or not um i

very much think that you can and as such

they're pretty archetypal example of how

the the notions of psychedelia got

expanded and ran within to the into the

70s

um i think particularly in terms of

expansion of song structure and the idea

of incorporating classical elements into

music of incorporating avant-garde

movements

pink floyd's first entirely post-barrett

release was the film soundtrack more

which despite the limited success of the

feature film reached number nine in the

uk charts

however it was to be their next album

that would truly demonstrate their

progressive credentials

i think alma gummer was the first time

when pink floyd decided they were going

to make a completely progressive album

as such the the idea of dividing um half

of each side of the album to different

members of the band was a kind of very

archetypically progressive concept that

they could experiment with these

chunks of time as they wished i knew

that they or particularly roger and i

think the others had set themselves up

with some kind of

recording studio at home in their homes

so

i encouraged them in actual fact

to make tapes

uh at home

and to bring them into me and and we'd

go over it together etc i did that

individually

and so that's really at the start of the

idea of uh

four different uh quarters

of that album and that's how it how it

began and i i encourage them to do that

i thought that would be a very good idea

for them to produce their own quarter

the band went into the studio

individually to see what they could do

creatively

and i think to some of the results are

appalling
the nick mason results you know should

never have been released

and gilmore himself is ashamed of what

he did in that yet you know a little bit

of his stuff is is is okay it's a

reminder that pink floyd are very much

more than the sum of their parts you

know and i think that when it comes to

their solo careers i think roger watson

particularly realized that that they're

never going to do anything that's going

to measure up despite the solo quarters

concept the album reached number 5 in

the uk charts on its release in october

1969

its popularity was helped by the records

artwork and the fact that it was a

double album containing a second disc of

live material i think the artwork is

fantastic

you know i mean they put a lot of effort

into the artwork now the idea of the

receding images and reality and stuff

the other album though the live album is

very good i think it benefits the fact

that it is recorded live and so you've

got this kind of echoey kind of

cavernous feel and i think that it

really encapsulates you know pink floor

our space rockers at their best

[Music]

zabriskie point

a remote

and barren blister of land in the

american desert

as isolated

as the face of the moon it's a risky

point by antonioni i think is a classic

film because it features the great for

the dead and the stones most importantly

features to floyd despite the fact that

pink floyd were originally commissioned

to record the entire soundtrack and

ended up by only contributing three

songs to the film zabriskie point still

became both an artistic and commercial

success

the soundtrack also became the first

release to feature the pink floyd of the

1970s

however their first studio album of the

decade would include their most

ambitious song so far

an entire side of the record was

dedicated to the title song atom heart

mother adam one of the i think is dated

very badly it's it's this massive

orchestral english kind of prague

psychedelic thing
[Music]

they'd been experimenting live with long

pieces of music and different sections

they've been doing this for about two

years by the time they got to half of

this stuff never got recorded got kind

of split up and broken up into

individual songs been mucking about with

this for ages um what they did was with

that apartment of those they employed

they got an orchestra on board abby

rhodes orchestral session players came

in

the piece had been scored by a friend of

theirs who was a kind of a composer

called ron giesin who was also sort of a

kind of an avant-garde musician the poet

in his own right very strong personality

he was sort of he was a friend of roger

waters and nick masons and he was kind

of entrusted with scoring this piece of

music they went off on tour when they

came back

they weren't entirely happy with what

he'd done and he probably wasn't

entirely happy with their ideas you know

they've both talked about this over the

years it's seen i think somebody's just

one of the band members described it as

a failed experiment in actual fact it's

just that what they ended up with

probably wasn't quite the way they heard

it in their heads i think i'm probably a

bit unique in thinking that the song

atom heart mother is actually any good

it doesn't seem to hold a great amount

of favor with either pink floyd fans or

pink floyd themselves and it doesn't

have very high critical currency but

while some people see it's virtually

only really as a driver of records and

certainly it's um

it shares a lot of musical and

conceptual ideas in common with that

piece

i think it has some validity in its own

right

parts of it are very exciting and quite

invigorating

and um

one of the reasons i'm i'm particularly

fond of atom heart mother is that

it manages to be

pseudo-classical without somehow without

being particularly pompous that it has a

sort of nice sort of enyo moriconius

westerny feel to it

and it's quite warm for uh for a prague

suite
and quite melodic

and it has moments of indulgence i think

but overall i think it's quite

successful but as a suite of music at

one side of the vinyl

different tempos different changes

there's some weird gregorian style

chanting in the middle there's this

fantastic kind of funky rock guitar

thing which you can hear them ripping

off again later on dark side the moon

it's interesting to listen to now

because it's all little ideas little

seeds of ideas that you know that you

you can hear them coming back to three

or four years down the line again it's

it's put together though in the same

spirit as everything they've done since

since said barrett left is like well

let's kind of just try this and see what

we can do

despite the song's shortcomings the

album itself was extremely successful

the second side of the record contained

more conventional songs and on its

release in october 1970 it reached

number one in the uk charts

however crucially pink floyd had begun

to experiment with the long song form

a style of music they would come to

master on their next album

when they started on medal there was no

great plan no

set idea about what they were going to

do so there was a slight sense that

things were creatively stagnating and

that what happened they'd arrive in

studios they'd have to slightly cast

around for things to sort of fill up the

time on their albums

and i think that that process slightly

came to a head during during medal when

they when i think they were rather

despairing about what they would be able

to find to actually make an album when

they went into abbey road studios in

january of 1971 to make metal they um

didn't know what to do so you know they

they decided that they would um make

sounds out of household objects and they

began recording bits and pieces in the

studio which were given titles such as

like nothing part one nothing popped i

think it goes up to nothing part 32. it

opened their eyes that will cam what

could be done

uh in terms of getting these effects in

uh

in in recording the only one of those

sounds that eventually was used was the

um

the sound of um

rick wright's steinway piano

going to the microphone of a hammered

organs rotating leslie cabinet speaker

people don't realize that this rotating

leslie cabinet

in the bottom it makes a very strange

doppler effect if you put a note shirt

watery pinky sound of the piano

the starting point is supposedly that

that wonderful sort of pinging keyboard

sound at the beginning

uh very tuned for very sort of dollful

sound it's something rick wright did

again possibly by accident they decided

to keep it and they just they worked

with it from there that single note

would form the very heart of metal

pink floyd eventually developed the

sound into one of the most extraordinary

tracks they would ever record

another sidelong suite by the name of

echoes it's almost like a showcase

for what they could do when they put

their minds to it and that's the

impression you get listening to echoes

is that after a lot of experimentation a

lot of kind of flounding around in the

dark they kind of put their minds to

something you look at that weird pretty

dark side the moon posted barrett time

and echoes is is the crowning glory from

that that's probably the most successful

piece of music they did in that period

that those sort of four or five years

despite having composed one of their

boldest statements before the song could

be released they had to compose an

entire other side

in reverse to atom heart mother the band

decided to save echoes for later in the

album and open with the instrumental one

of these days one of these days is a

great opening track on on metal it's got

this really ominous bass i think they've

double tracked the bass or done

something with it

it sounds like a doctor who theme it's

got all kinds of sort of wrong granger

bbc radiophonics workshop sounds going

on in there i think they had been taken

to the uh

bbc uh sound effects studio i don't have

any bearing on it the story is that the

track was much much longer originally uh

you know and i know some people involved

with the album very surprised when they

heard the finished article as it had

been kind of cut down to four or five

minutes or whatever it is but i think

it's it's a classic pink floyd

instrumental what i find amusing about

one of these days is is how it's

reflective of the of the way that pink

floyd worked in of their characters in

that

roger waters walks in with with this you

know begins playing this bass riff

and um

and he can't play it very well

essentially so david gilmour picks up

another base and plays it better

but for some reason they end up they

both end up recording bass parts you

just think well okay it's pointing to

save arguments and they're in different

channels and so you can actually tell

which is roger waters because it's

played worse and his strings were

completely knackered on his base as well

and this other really bright well played

bass part on the other channel and to me

it's just interesting that the

reflective of the at that time creative

and useful tension between the pair of

them that produced you know quite

interesting pull and push between these

bass lines

[Laughter]

[Music]

[Laughter]

[Music]

metal was the first album that they

again made extensive use of this italian

box called the benson echo wreck

basically one of the very early effects

boxes it could like do equalization it

could do reverb it could do echo it

could echo delays honest and this is

what um sid barrett and rick wright used

on the private gates of dorm they

decided that their metal they got back

to using it because they were fiddling

around with it and then somehow they got

two bass guitars going through the same

time it was a massive water basin the

very distinctive thing about it was is

is the base obviously and it's got a

slap

echo on it which which is a very close

repeat

thing so so that when when you play the

note it repeats

a millisecond afterwards and this this

is an old thing um made famous by sam

phillips with some records on on on the

early elvis and jerry lee's stuff and

you know you would have that um amazing

quality you know and it's a very

promising start to an album and and

you know the the guitar sound the the

distorted slide

guitar that david gilmour is using i

mean that's very very effective

[Music]

one of these days has that great guitar

sound great guitar solo from dave

gilmour it's quite a relief to hear him

being kind of let off the leash after

all his time because he you know he what

he does best he's not being allowed to

do on sauce full of secrets things like

i'm again my world let's you know let's

let's not really go there and there's

there's snippets would be great playing

on the soundtrack out obviously or more

um you know and again on atom hot mother

but it's brilliant to hear him really

sort of let off the leash he's a

reticent kind of guy and he's not

somebody that would push himself forward

certainly not in the late 60s when he

joined an already established band you

know

you know waters having you know growing

up in cambridge with sid barry knew

those guys from cambridge but he's

stepping into another man's shoes and it

took a while for him to to settle in and

i think be allowed to do what he wants

to do by the time of medal um dave

gilmore had become much more confident i

think as a composer he contributed a

solo composition to the atom heart

mother album and had been very integral

to the composition of atom heart mother

itself

and he'd been in the band some time by

then so i think he was feeling a lot

more that he could push his weight

around a bit really

it's

david gilmour who is becoming essence of

king floyd at that moment rick wright

who you know did a lot initially in his

keyboard sound was kind of really you

know quite a significant aspect that

he's beginning to sort of recede and

influence is becoming more and more

about his kind of one of his sort of

textured sort of

you know brushstrokes and layers of like

david gilmour's guitar and i think that

he's almost becoming as it were the kind

of material the body of the pink floyd

at that point

[Music]

the next song on the album a pillow of

wins was to be a much more gentle piece

i cringe at the title you know an awful

lot of fun could be made of of that

title i i actually it's a very pretty

piece and and it's got a nice

it's got that english folky

feel to it that you know a lot of bands

were getting into that you know traffic

we're around and that that kind of

pastoral thing with with acoustic

guitars pink floyd had been exploring

this this post psychedelic pastoral side

ever since um barrett had left and um

it's a very it's a very english um

gentle

slightly poetic i suppose romantic um

side of the band there's a very

different sort of passion feel from sid

barrett's used to sort of okay with sid

barrett

it was this kind of sort of psychedelic

hinterland of sort of bit civil

half-remembered fairy tales and it was

like a population of scarecrows and

gnomes all of whom were taking on kind

of rather sinister quality and i think

with when pink floyd do the same sort of

thing on a track like this then it's

much much more kind of

it's much more drowsy and just bucolic

and pleasant and very hazy

[Music]

for those who are used to roger waters

the the sort of you know bitter missing

throat but it's quite weird to hear the

lyrics of things like a pillow of winds

because they're so sort of it's almost

purple and it's poeticism

and um

as i say it's a very gentle side that

some people regard at the time is rather

bland but i've always found it um rather

fetching and and wistful and it has it

sort of takes you somewhere in the same

way that the the sort of cosmic jamming

takes you somewhere i think that the

more pastoral side sort of lulls you

it's like you're lying by a bubbling

brook or something or out in a summer

meadow and you know falling sort of

falling asleep and listening to

something sort of half asleep half awake

[Music]

it does sound very english folksy it it

it sounds like a sort of song it sounds

it reminds me of cambridge in the 60s

which of course is where where gilmore

and waters had grown up um i think that

kind of that more gentle acoustic side

to that album

is possibly a little more inspired

though by something like crosby stills

and nash that kind of west coast rock

those kind of groups i mean gilmore

waters were both listening to that sort

of stuff they're both big bob dylan fans

and the crosby stills and nash album had

come out in around 70. i think they've

probably done some more stuff by the

time medal came out and i the impression

i've always got is there's a little bit

of that it's a bit of a west coast

influence in there but of course not

being from the west coast

it goes through the filter the pink

floyd filter and it makes you think of

them sort of sitting by the river cam

smoking a massive joint

fearless is a sort of interesting um

song i think it's only the the second

composition that david gilmour and roger

waters wrote together

in fact when i interviewed dave gilmore

once he'd completely forgotten that he'd

had any contribution to the song

whatsoever which is quite sweet in a way

considering you know how how much those

two have

have battled over such issues in

subsequent years

um

but i think it was

waters came up with the with the riff

and i think gilmore's added added the

bridge and the waters wrote the lyrics

and this was the basis would prove to be

the basis for a very fruitful creative

partnership that would

come to pass over the next few years as

as both these players played to their

strength really roger waters lyrical and

i think conceptual gift he had great

musical ideas and he wasn't a fantastic

musician

and uh david gilmour's way with a sort

of wistful slightly yearning tune

fearless is an interesting case because

here you've got

dave gilmore singing a lyric

written by roger waters and

you can see the possible beginnings of a

fault line that would eventually develop

into the kind of schism that eventually

did for the group um

and you can imagine there's probably a

mutual resentment on dave gilmour's part

there's perhaps something that roger

dalton sometimes felt when he was able

to sing pete townsend lyric it was he

was being a mouthpiece for somebody

else's thoughts and ideas

whereas roger waters

might have resented the fact that you

know he'd written this thing but that

somebody else is like singing it and

somebody else is up front and perhaps as

it were taking more of the sort of

credit and attention

[Music]

turns round

phillips is one of the stronger tracks

on the album i mean you've obviously got

the sound of liverpool football uh

supporters choir that kind of comes in

at the end doing it doing a bit of uh

you'll never walk alone which is you

know is now the thing we associate the

most with the song

in actual fact though it's quite a

pointed water roger walters lyric um

the idea of sort of getting on doing

whatever you want and

kind of damn the consequences and about

having a bit of bravery and being being

your own man if you like and you can

read into that what you like there's

some suggestion that it's about sid

barrett fearless was partly inspired by

sid barrett in the barrett had taught

waters the tuning that he used to create

the riff

and the lines about fearlessly the idiot

face the crowd um have been speculated

to be

about sid barrett when he went through

his phase of just strumming one chord

and staring at the crowd while the um

while the band were playing so if you

see the song as at least in some ways

being about barrett

um then perhaps um the use of the

of the liverpool crowd singing you'll

never walk alone which um could be seen

as a message to barrett you know just

just a message of solidarity and

compassion that

waters would actually

tend to to send out to his former

bandmate throughout throughout their

subsequent career

[Applause]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]
saturn play i think it's one of those

songs that pink floyd fans tend to vote

as one of the worst pink floyd songs

ever written i think um

it seems a bit of a shame it's a nice

sort of amiable jazzy

gentle summery little song and

the title at least recalls um the time

when pink floyd were sort of based in

san tropez in the south of france um a

couple of years previously it's about

being in santa pay i mean they spent a

lot of time out playing south france

they become huge in europe um and they

all took a holiday together down there

and went out and with their wives and

children and roadies and

probably had some terrible arguments in

between going off and playing some

outdoor events but from judging from the

song rod sounds like roswell thinks of

it very fondly

[Music]

of an old city

one of the tracks that you do think of

as filler this is what probably one of

the tracks that lets down the first side

of metal it raises the interesting

question of whether pink floyd and more

about text or texture whether about the

songwriting or just about the kind of as

it were the materiality of their sound

and i think that this track suggests the

latter that if you reduce pink floyd to

just

songs and just have a very low key kind

of accompaniment they're really not all

that impressive

the final song on the first side of

metal features an unusual cameo from

steve marriott's dog sheamus sheamus is

a is a joke track that probably seemed

like a good idea at a time to put it on

the record but which is i think

surprised again it's supposedly supposed

to surprise some of the people who first

heard that who've been involved in the

making a record and then heard it i'm

surprised it went on there i mean

gilmore was i think the story is

gilmore's famously looked after steve

merritt's dog

sheamus when he was away on tour gilmore

looked after the dog did some house

sitting um and it's like hey look if i

play the guitar or the harmonica the dog

howls

and it found its way onto the record

[Music]
[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

i think in context it's a sort of

harmless little doodle really you can't

make any great claims for it um

but in the context of a sort of lazy

summery album that sort of fits in this

sort of gentle strummed blues and

it's a very typically pink floyd idea

the the use of

another field recording really of you

know of a dog

baying as a sort of musical element

using sound of sound effects as such you

know non-musical sound effects as an

integral element of the song

and you kind of it's something that they

revisited later on on animals dogs in a

much more sort of interesting and dark

way but in the context of this sort of

gentle

album i think it kind of works it's

almost as if they've um

you know they've got two or three

minutes to spare you know before the big

event of side two and they're just

thinking well let's uh pass the time

with a little campfire ditty

um it's a very very disposable

whimsy

[Music]

medal is really in lots of ways half an

album it's really just a showcase i

would say for the echoes i think that

the the the tracks receding it are quite

interesting a bit of a mixed bag but

really they're just sort of little mini

tasters for the main event

the entire second side of the lp was

given over to one song alone

the epic

echoes perhaps it's the pulse the pace

at which pink floyd worked

that they sometimes seem very very sort

of languid the extent of almost sort of

aimlessness it's almost not quite sure

what their purpose is where they're

going what they're trying to do

and it's only perhaps when you you reach

the sort of the great magnum opus these

echoes that you get this kind of full

realization of perhaps what they've been

looking to do for a few years echoes is

another side-long piece of music

20-minute piece of music

it's a huge step on from atom heart

mother though because

as a piece of music it flows much more

seamlessly than atom heart mother did

you haven't got the choir or the

orchestra on there which you had with

that mother he's very much about all

about the four of them echoes was the

transplanting of

what you would call you know a

a symphonic or um

you know a movement structure

of classical music to

what we would call head music it's

interesting the way that all the parts

of echoes

work together i mean you i mean you can

create you can always create your own

mental sort of images for it really i

mean you could see the very opening as a

kind of submarine kind of rising to the

surface and then as it does so you could

sort of imagine you know like staring at

a porthole picking out the kind of the

glitter of the sea in the early morning

sun

[Music]

then it sort of like sort of merges

serenely into the kind of doing the main

theme of the song you know the main sort

of

lyrical bulk most of the lyrics of paint

lord are sung by david gilmour and rick

right together

not just everybody's own but to get that

soft and burrowing sound together we

women seem to never talk about this

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

me

and i am you and what i see is me when i

was first listening to that i just

thought it was

one of those sort of little tongue

twisting kind of logic twisting

lines that you'd sometimes get in things

that were aspiring to be poetic and

particularly in post psychedelic things

and

but waters has pointed out that what

that's about it is compassion and

empathy and and seeing yourself in

others and as such he very much sees

that as the sort of essence of his of

his work as a writer and he used to look

out the window of this flat and see all

these commuters backwards and forwards

going backwards and forwards up the gold

hall road going to work going to the

station and so on and it was about that

idea of people kind of passing in the

street and so on so what he was muddling

his way towards was a more kind of

grounded sound the more real sound

despite all the prob rock uh

connotations of the music he was trying

to write about real issues i think the

lyrics see him moving between the more

sort of lyrical

psychedelic slightly sort of cosmic

musings that had been sort of uh

afflicting pink floyd and their

contemporaries for some time

and something a little bit more rooted

in the everyday in the sort of

humanistic and material concerns that

would come to dominate pink floyd from

that side of the moon onwards and

there's this rather sort of choppy

section um with the kind of interplay

between david gilmour and um rick wright

on sort of you know right and guitar and

an organ

[Music]

it's an absolute master class in the

combining guitar with keyboard i mean

it's a keyboard

the keyboard and guitar literally

have a conversation all the way to that

which is so subtle
but it's almost like there's telepathic

and i think this is this is the thing

that really

makes lifts it up and then you've got

this kind of wonderful sort of like

gloomy maelstrom you know

and then that's all the whale songs

section um in which there's this sort of

sudden sense of being completely adrift

and disorientated in like far far from

land and all bearings lost

[Music]

the strange kind of nightmarish uh

section in the middle which is quite

quite it's not the kind of thing you've

got to listen to with headphones on the

lights out and then gradually sort of

moving back you know you might say you

know to shaw

whatever and then there's a sort of sort

of serene triumphant sort of

air and like you know litter around you

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

what i think makes echo stand aside from

a lot of other progressive rocks longer

tunes is the fact that

it's actually reasonably cohesive and

simple for over its 25 odd minute length

it's got a nice sort of circular

structure to it it starts and ends with

um with a song essentially with an

instrumental passage going into a song

at the beginning and a song

sort of eeking out to an instrumental

passage at the end as a piece of music

it's hard to speak musically it's one a

heck of a piece of music

it's um

it's it's so um

it's got this cunning um edits in it and

it's put together with so much skill but

also it it evolves and it can be played

live

when the album was released it was

marked by a rather opaque sleeve design

for the band who would produce some of

the most iconic album art of the 20th

century the medal sleeve seems to have

been somewhat forgotten the artwork

medal is an interesting case in point um

storm thorson um had actually provided

the photo for asmr heart mother the very

very famous virtue of just a cow which

is a sort of strange sort of

really inconsequential image and when

you're looking for artwork for metal he

came up with the idea of a baboon's arse

which um he put it to the group uh the

group were in another part of the world

at the time and i think they kind of

scratched their chins collectively and

suggested that perhaps it wasn't the

kind of image that they wanted

to represent this particular uh

piece of work and they themselves came

up with the idea of um an ear underwater

i mean the reason why i love the

coverage because you look at it it looks

like camel's head i know it sounds

bizarre but it doesn't look like camel's

head if you take the shadow of the ear

and then if you think that's actually a

thing itself it looks like the eye of it

you know a camel's neck and stuff i

think it has many interpretations

and you know only only when i was much

older older than someone tell me to turn

it honestly i opened up there's an ear

and i didn't know it isn't there yeah i

didn't even know what it was you know as

a 12 year old child when i first looked

at that album you know an an older boy

at school then lent it to me and i just

spent you know hours gazing at this

image that i didn't know it was an ear

or whatever it was and this you know eo

submerged in water that seemed to

speak you know sort of very deeply to me

about sort of all sorts of mystical

cosmic things i couldn't begin to

comprehend and it seemed to completely

tie in with

the sort of incredible sort of expansive

cosmic music i was hearing totally on

side two on echoes on its release on

november the 13th 1971 medal quickly

rose to number three in the uk charts

medal's kind of a strange album but i

think i think it does work as a whole i

think that one of these days and echoes

sort of create bookends for the for the

sort of lighter material inside and you

sort of need that lighter gentler

material as a nice sort of intermission

perhaps between these two sort of larger

more expansive cosmic songs despite the

contemporary success of the record medal

has been somewhat overshadowed by the

extraordinary success of pink floyd's

next studio album dark side of the moon

metal seems to actually represent a kind

of end in itself once

once they've done metal it seems that

they've got us perhaps sort of

completely rethink what kind of group

they are what they're going to do next

um and so

when you get to dark side the moon it

seems that um they've been sort of

thinking about what kind of you know

where they're going what kind of group

they're going to be they've perhaps sort

of started thinking again maybe from

scratch to something having achieved

what they achieved on medal it's about

the end of one era and the beginning of

the other um it definitely you know once

you get to dark side the moon it's a

different band in a lot of in a lot of

ways

there's many elements on the dark side

of the moon that you can hear being road

tested on metal but dark side the moon

wouldn't sounded that way without an

album such as metal you know the leap

from metal to dark side the moon is much

much smaller than it would have been say

from atom heart mother or ammo

[Music]

despite medal's slightly lost status the

album and in particular echoes has

become a powerful influence on artists

like the orb and even radiohead

and of course it would be a template for

anybody who is interested in sound

research down the line you see i think

just the sort of sheer ambition you know

the sonic ambition for example

and i think that's all later provided

kind of resource for people like um

the orb you know people are the whole

post rock brigade

[Music]

[Applause]

floyd became like the

the kind of the spiritual leaders of all

the ambient house people and that's why

eventually the orb and it floyd

they they were there photographs on the

front of the melody maker when the orb

had become superstars so it's kind of

interesting that the orb became

superstars sampling the floyd

and

and they were the only band that i

thought that were sampled you know there

was no something like king crimson there

yet so i wrestled like a power so why

were the floyds sampled

and it's a kind of an interesting thing

and to see the floyd with the orb that

was just a sort of massive generational

crossover as well

despite the focus and some of pink

floyd's other work

medal is still a truly remarkable album

and represents a crucial point in the

band's development i think you could

make a case for metal as being sort of

the great overlooked pink floyd album

the great lost pink floyd album if you

if you want um because of course there's

so much focus on the dark side of the

moon and there's also so much focus on

the sibara era which causes a very short

period of time

it's only really the one album so i

think with medal it's kind of medal's

been lost along the way the medal is

often forgotten in the

in the way people look at it but i mean

the people should go back to it now i

think what it represents is that they

finally found themselves their true

cells