Interstellar Overdrive is the name of a January 2014 Shindig guide and it's worth every penny you spend on it. In 35 articles on 170 pages, it tries to define and explore the space rock phenomenon. It has in-dept articles on Acid Mothers Temple, Tim Blake, Neu!, Ozric Tentacles, Yes and many others without forgetting The Tornados' Telstar and the obligatory space rock top 30 countdown. A 6-pages article, called 'The Reluctant Spacerockers', written by Austin Matthews, investigates the frail relation between Pink Floyd and space rock.

This is part two of our review, for part one that covers an entirely different matter, please check:
Pink Floyd. Still First in Space. NOT!  

Interstellar Overdrive

Even if it omits the ambient Cluster One instrumental from The Division Bell, that with Storm Thorgerson's artwork of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile, refers to Astronomy Domine, we thoroughly enjoyed the well researched 'Reluctant Spacerockers' essay. What we are not happy with however, is the picture that is put on top of the article.

Here it is (we have cropped the picture a bit to only show the band members and we put some nifty numbers above each person).

Copyright: Pictorial Press. We honestly think we can publish this picture under the 'Fair Use' rules, especially as it will be used for criticism, comment reporting, news gathering and frankly, for taking the piss out of the copyright holders. See also: legal stuff.

It is a nice picture, no problem about that, but unfortunately the band isn't Pink Floyd. There are five musicians on the picture but the five man Floyd barely existed for 8 days in the beginning of 1968.

This picture goes around for ages but the question if this is really the Floyd was raised on the 'A Fleeting Glimpse' forum in 2009, where Mr. Pinky identified the band as Dantalian's Chariot.

Hi all. Only to say you that, according with Ian Russell, this picture, posted in the page 57, shows a band called Dantalian's Chariot, a famous psychedelic band in the end '60. This photo was also in the Cliff Jones 'Echoes' book, but has nothing to do with the Floyd at all.

It seemed to be a 5-man Floyd pic, but NOT, we really should know better, wrong instruments, wrong equipment etc.

That band's something we can't explain

The picture shows five musicians and that particular setup in Pink Floyd was only known for five live gigs between 12 January 1968 and 20 January 1968. On the Yeeshkul forum this picture has been further analysed by fans who know these things much better than we do...

The five men on the picture should be, left to right, numbers one to five:

1: Roger Waters playing the bass. The picture isn't clear enough to recognise the bass player, but the bass should've been a Rickenbacker and the musician on the left is holding a Fender.

2: Nick Mason. First of all: this isn't Nick's drum set. The silver toms look the same, but the bass drum is smaller and doesn't have a front skin. Pink Floyd always had a front skin on the drums and furthermore Nick always had two bass drums instead of one.

3: David Gilmour. It is weird that the third man doesn't play a guitar. Especially for David Gilmour who normally is glued to his axe and who was hired in to mimic Syd's solos.

4: Syd Barrett. The man on the picture is playing a black or sunburst Strat, a guitar Syd didn't have, as far as we know. David Gilmour only acquired one two years later. A white strat would have been more appropriate for Syd.

5: Rick Wright. Although the keyboard player is nearly completely hidden in the dark one can see something that resembles a huge perm. Richard was never the man to have an afro. It is awfully dark but the organ doesn't seem to be a Hammond, Rick Wright's favourite instrument.

And there is more. The equipment is not Pink Floyd's. There is a Marshall stack and a Fender Bassman and these are not Floydian at all, so tell us the people who know. What the equipment does have in common with Pink Floyd is a Watkins (aka WEM) PA unit, but that is hardly unique.

Then there is the projection of the nude woman left on the picture, she also appears on the right side of the stage (on the uncropped version). We have never seen something similar on the dozens of live pictures of the Floyd of that era. Often avant-garde movies were shown on the walls (or the ceiling) while bands where playing in the psychedelic clubs, but it is again one of those things that don't add up.

And last: this picture is often described as taken at the UFO club but the 5 man Floyd didn't play there in the 8 days they existed.

As for the assumption that the band is Dantalian's Chariot with Zoot Money on keyboards and a young Andy Summers on guitar the cons are about the same. That band consisted of four members, not five, and Zoot Money didn't have a big hairdo either. But apparently Jeff Dexter confirmed it is them allright. So this could have been taken during their UFO gig on the 22nd of September, 1967.

Copy copy

The above picture is copyrighted by Pictorial Press who have it in their Pink Floyd folder as number 1398. Unfortunately they can't give us a date but they do mention it was taken at the UFO club. To further demonstrate their competence they categorise Pink Floyd under the category 'metal', a class they share with KC and The Sunshine Band, Dionne Warwick and Sandie Shaw. These people are professionals, we can tell you that! (We are aware of the existence of The Nile Song and Ibiza Bar, though.)

But scallywags or not, Pictorial Press has several times managed to sell this picture. We find it on page 20 of William Ruhlmann's Pink Floyd (1993), but luckily the author caught the error in time and describes it as 'an unidentified group at UFO'. This biography is one of those mass printed 'take your money and run' budget releases with scarce text and plenty of pictures. It is also one of the few biographies that was published in Dutch and in that edition the picture can be found on page 16.

In 1996 Cliff Jones published the picture on page 25 of his Echoes biography, not to be confused with the Glenn Povey history book that has the same title. Subtitled 'the stories behind every Pink Floyd song' the book attempted to tell the band's history track per track and album per album, but there it miserably failed. There are plenty of mistakes in the text and also on the pictures: on page 29 Roger Waters can be seen but the picture is described as 'a young Dave Gilmour'; page 25 has the UFO picture this article is all about, captioned 'The Floyd light show, UFO club'. Apparently David Gilmour was so angry about this book that he threatened to sue the author:

"The book has a very large number of errors - over 120 - some careless, some very serious", the star's solicitors, tell me. "We have also identified four serious libels of David Gilmour. The band take a very serious view of this and are furious." (Daily Express Dec. 9th 1996, quoted on Brain Damage)

An agreement was reached and the book was shipped to the shops, but with a sticker on page 107 that replaced 23 lines with new text. We will never know how the passage reads that infuriated Gilmour so much. Original copies were send back to the publisher and seem to have vanished from this planet. For those interested in the many mistakes there is this webpage showing them all and for a review we can guide you to Brain Damage. To add insult to injury this book was also issued under the title Another Brick In The Wall (for the overseas market?) but it comes with exactly the same mistakes.

London Live by Tony Bacon could be found for years on the official Syd Barrett website where they thought it was all about the person that makes them sell these t-shirts. However, the book is not a Pink Floyd, nor a Syd Barrett biography but an 'inside story of live bands in the capital's trail-blazing music clubs' of London. Page 90 and 91 have the (artificially coloured) picture where it is called 'a majestic lightshow at UFO', not mentioning any band.

In October last year, a new biography, Behind the Wall, appeared, written by Hugh Fielder. Floyd anoraks say that the book doesn't really reveal new facts, apart from the obligatory updates about the Roger Waters never ending Wall-world-tour. One thing that makes us hesitate buying it is that the UFO club picture is in there and that it apparently is attributed to the band we all love.

Shame on Shindig!

Of course Pictorial Press, in their role as entrepreneurial con men, are not entirely to blame for selling their crap images. Authors and graphical editors should not only check and double-check text material but also the pictures they publish.

The guys from Shindig normally deliver excellent work, but before he gave his fiat for this issue Jon 'Mojo' Mills must have inhaled a wee bit too much sweet smoke from his water-pipe.

Shame on you, crazy Shindig!

P.S. Obviously The Anchor has warned Pictorial Press about their mistake and as soon as we will receive an answer this article will be updated. (Update 2016: they never answered.)
P.P.S. Shindig was so kind to give us the following message: "We were duped! I should have spotted it. Many apologies."

The Anchor wishes to thank: the Yeeshkul and A Fleeting Glimpse forums and their members, b_squared, demamo, Rich Hall, hallucalation, Mr. Pinky, Orgone Accumulator, saygeddylee, supervehicle, sydzappa...

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Bacon, Tony: London Live, Balafon Books, London, 1999, p. 90-91.
Jones, Cliff: Another Brick in the Wall, Broadway Books, New York, 1996, p. 25. In the UK this book has been published under the title 'Echoes'.
Ruhlmann, William: Pink Floyd, Magna Books, Leicester, 1993, p. 20.
Ruhlmann, William: Pink Floyd, ADC, Eke (Belgium), 1994, p. 16. Dutch edition of the above.
Fielder, Hugh: Behind The Wall, Race Point Publishing, New York, 2013.

The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad character.
More info: The Anchor.
Read our legal stuff: Legal Stuff.

Interstellar Overdrive is the name of a January 2014 Shindig guide and it's worth every penny you spend on it. In 35 articles on 170 pages, it tries to define and explore the space rock phenomenon. It has in-dept articles on Amon Düül II, Gong, Hawkwind, Pink Fairies, Spacemen 3, Sun Ra and many others without forgetting the sci-fi movie soundtracks of the fifties (Forbidden Planet!) and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Doctor Who!).

In a six pages article 'The Reluctant Spacerockers' the on-off relationship between Pink Floyd and space rock is examined and what an enjoyable essay that is.

While journalists, who are nothing but a bunch of lazy buggers anyway, have labelled the band as space rockers, its members denied this, in particular Roger Waters who reacted in his usual diplomatic style: “Space – what the fuck are they talking about?” Probably the bass player is so demented nowadays that he has forgotten that his lame Amused to Death album features some alien anthropologists trying to find out why all these skeletons are sitting before their TV sets.

Then Austin Matthews chimes in and quite intelligible shows where and how the Pink Floyd used space rock tricks to appease the masses.

Space 1988

There is an error in the article although the author is only partially to blame. (We are just being gentle here, that spaced out sod could of course have done a search on the Internet first.) On page 29 David Gilmour is cited:”To say that we are thrilled at the thought of being the first rock band to be played in space is something of an understatement.”

This refers to the Soyuz TM-7 rocket launch from the 26th of November 1988 five days after Pink Floyd had released their Delicate Sound Of Thunder (live) album. The French president François Mitterrand attended the launch because of cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chrétien, who was the first western European man in space (this was his second flight, by the way, his first was in 1982). David Gilmour and Nick Mason attended because a cassette of their latest album was sent to the MIR space station, apparently on demand by one of the cosmonauts. We'll never know if this is true or just a staged lie but surely there was a mighty PR machine behind the band who made it clear to the world that this was the first rock music recording played in outer space.

Which was not true. Simple as that.

spAce 1987

In 2003, while researching for an Orb biography that would never see the light of day, the Reverend stumbled upon the electronic band spAce who had a million-selling disco hit in 1977 with Magic Fly. The band split in the early eighties but electronic composer Didier Marouani had a particular successful solo career in Russia (and the East-European communist countries), often using the spAce name and logo, depending on the lawsuit of the month that ex-members were bringing on each other.

Marouani's solo work is slightly reminiscent of Jean-Michel Jarre, Mike Oldfield or Tangerine Dream and was (still is) inspired by Russian and American space programs and sci-fi themes. In 1987 he released a CD called Space Opera (got the slight promotional nudge towards his old band?) and that CD was taken by cosmonauts Alexander Viktorenko, Syrian Muhammed Faris and Aleksandr Aleksandrov to the MIR orbital station in July 1987, more than a year before Pink Floyd made all that brouhaha.

In 2003, long before the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit was founded, the Reverend interviewed Didier Marouani who had the following to say:

I was composing my album Space Opera and I had the idea to bring Americans and Russians together on my album which at that time was very difficult (especially from the USSR). After negotiating with the Soviet ministry of Culture for 6 months I got the authorization to have the Red Army Choir together with the Harvard University Glee Club choir, who were recorded separately.

Following my concept I thought it would be very nice to have this first Space Opera shipped to MIR and then launched into outer space. They asked me to wait while they would study my request and in the meantime I wrote a letter to Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev who answered very positive.

Two months later the Ministry of Space confirmed an appointment. On July, the 2nd, 1987 I was received by the Russian cosmonauts and I gave them a CD, together with a CD-player and 2 small speakers. This was extensively reported in the Russian press.

The cosmonauts left Baikonur on the 22nd of July 1987 and in October 1987 the CD, the player and the 2 speakers were launched into outer space. So my music really floats into space which is for me a very big and happy achievement.

So for sure Pink Floyd did not have the first music in space. During a concert tour in the USSR, I met cosmonaut Aleksandr Pavlovich Aleksandrov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, again who told me that he worked in space for 7 months, listening to my music. [Note: actually Aleksandrov stayed 160 days in Space in 1987.]

Lie for a Lie

But of course Mr. Gilmour may not entirely have been lying when he said Pink Floyd was the first rock band to be played in space. Didier Marouani's oeuvre is more electronic, new age (and recently: dance) oriented and the Floyd, as we all know, have never flirted with these musical styles before. (Yes, this is called irony.)

The last laugh may be for Didier Marouani though. In 2011 he released an album called From Earth to Mars and it was officially appointed by Roskosmos as the album that will go with the first manned Russian flight to that planet. But we earnestly doubt that listening to it for 6 months in a row will have a positive effect on its crew.

This is part one of the Shindig Interstellar Overdrive review. Part two covers an entirely different subject: Pictorial Press selling fake Pink Floyd pictures!

(The above article is entirely based upon facts, some situations may have been enlarged for satirical purposes.)

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Marouani, Didier: First In Space, mail to Felix Atagong, 01 June 2003.

The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad character.
More info: The Anchor.
Read our legal stuff: Legal Stuff.