This page contains all the articles that match the Nick Mason-tag, chronologically sorted, from old to new.
Most browsers have a search function (Ctrl-F) that will highlight the entry you are looking for.
Alternatively there is the 'Holy Search' search field and the 'Taglist'.

On 30 June 1990 Pink Floyd played a short – albeit not very sharp - set at the Knebworth Festival. It has to be said that it was not the band’s sole responsibility that the gig was, how shall we call it, mediocre by Floydian standards. On this disastrous occasion, and this occasion alone, a 20 minutes promo film was shown at the beginning of the show, with a short appearance of none other than Iggy the Eskimo, somewhere between the 4 and 5 minutes mark.

The movie consisted of a retrospective of the Floyd’s history and included (parts of) several early songs (together with the predecessor of the promo clip): Arnold Layne, See Emily Play, Point Me At The Sky, It Would Be So Nice and others… Since it started with the first single, the movie had to end with the last one as well. Storm Thorgerson's visual rendition of the coke-euphoric-bring-on-the-digital-sound-effects Learning to Fly from the welcome to the drum machine album A Momentary Lapse of Reason ended the documentary.

In between the vintage scenes, Langley Iddens, who was then caretaker of the Astoria, David Gilmour’s houseboat studio, sits at a table contemplating the band’s past.

Langley Iddens (see top-left picture of this post) was a prominent face on the Momentary Lapse of Reason campaign. He is the man on the cover of the album but also acted in several promo and concert videos. He can be seen as a boat rower (Signs of Life), in flight gear (Learning To Fly) and in a hospital bed (On The Run). As Storm Thorgerson directed these backdrop movies it is logical to assume that also the Knebworth pre-show documentary was made by him.

There are however rumours that Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason was involved in the movie as well. Besides several promo clips of the Sixties the movie also shows pictures, newspaper articles, posters and flyers from the Floyd’s psychedelic past. It is a well-known fact that Mason has always been the archivist of the band, culminating in his personal account of the history of the band, Inside Out. That book, however, doesn’t reveal anything about Mason’s involvement on the Knebworth movie.

A short snippet of the Knebworth teaser, showing a happy Syd Barrett frolicking in a park with Iggy, made a collector’s career under the name Lost In The Woods or Syd Barrett Home Movie. This excerpt can be found several times on YouTube. Those cuts, however, are in a different order than on the original Knebworth feature. The Church has restored the initial flow and presents you hereafter two different versions of the so-called Lost In The Woods video.

Knebworth '90 Special Edition (DVD]

The first is taken from the DVD bootleg Knebworth '90 Special Edition on Psychedelic Closet Records. It is shared around the world amongst fans and it contains the complete concert plus some additional material, like MTV documentaries and interviews with the band.

It's a complete, stereo, recording from the original pay-per-view broadcast of Pink Floyd's appearance at the Knebworth '90 festival. The concert featured seven songs. Only five of these were broadcast. Two of the five were included on the official LD, VHS, and DVD releases. The other three songs haven't been seen since the original broadcast.

According to its maker, the pre-concert-documentary comes from a collector in England who had a first of second gen copy of the tape.

White Label [VHS]

Because the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit firmly believes in abundance, we have added a second version of the same movie, coming from a different source. The uploaded copy has been taken from a coverless VHS tape labelled Pink Floyd film, found at an open air market stall in London, and donated to the Church, in order to repent for his many sins, by Dark Globe.

Dark Globe took it upon him to further analyse the clip, it is obvious that it consists of different movies from different people at different places, and he even went so far as harassing, although the Church prefers the word investigating, some of the people who act in it. But the results of that enquiry will be highlighted in the next post in a couple of weeks.

Enjoy and don’t do anything that Iggy wouldn’t have done.

An image gallery with stills of the Lost In The Woods home movies can be found at the gallery.

Update April 2017: 2008 YouTube links have been replaced with their 2017 counterparts.

(This is the first part of the Love In The Woods topic. The second part can be found here: Love In The Woods (Pt. 2))

Cambridge Mafia

History, as we know it, is the story of royalty and generals and does not contain the memory of the millions who succumbed or who tried to build a normal life.

This also applies to modern popular history. Pink Floyd & Syd Barrett biographies and the so-called Sixties counter-culture studies that have appeared all repeat the memories of a small, nearly incestuous, circle of people who made it, one way or another. You always stumble upon those who have become the royalty and generals of the Underground. Others are less known, the lower rank officers, but still officers.

Other people had less luck, but at least we know some of their stories. Syd Barrett, although a millionaire in pounds, still is the prototype of the drug-burned psychedelic rock star. But there are other members of the Sixties Cambridge mafia, a term coined by David Gilmour, who didn’t make it and whose stories are less known.

Pip

Ian Pip Carter, whose career started in Cambridge in the early Sixties as pill pusher, had to fight a heroine addiction for most of his life. After a visit to his friend (and employer) David Gilmour in Greece Pip was imprisoned for drug possession where he was forced to go cold turkey but he fell again for the drug once released, despite the fact that the Pink Floyd guitarist send him to (and paid for) several rehab sessions. “The needle had dug so far; searching relentlessly for a vein, (that it) had decimated the nervous system in his left arm”, writes Matthew Scurfield in his account of the Cantabrigian London mob.

Described by Nick Mason as 'one of the world's most spectacularly inept roadies' the Floyd eventually had to let Pip go. He was the one who accidentally destroyed a giant jelly installation at the Roundhouse on the 15th October 1966 by parking the Pink Floyd van in the middle of it or, different witnesses tell different stories, by removing the wooden boards that supported the bath that kept the jelly. (You can read the story, taken from Julian Palacios 1988 Lost In The Woods biography here.)

In 1988 Carter was killed during a pub brawl in Cambridge. Mark Blake writes how David Gilmour used to help his old Cambridge friends whenever they were in financial trouble and Pip had been no exception.

People familiar with the finer layers of the Syd Barrett history know how Maharaj Charan Singh, the Master of the Sant Mat sect, rejected the rock star for obvious reasons. The religion was strictly vegetarian, absolutely forbid the use of alcohol and drugs and didn’t allow sex outside marriage. Syd 'I've got some pork chops in the fridge' Barrett hopelessly failed on all those points.

Ponji

It is believed that John Paul Robinson, nicknamed Ponji, a very ardent follower of the Path, tried to lure Syd into the sect after he had visited India in 1967. And probably it had been another Cantabrigian, Paul Charrier who converted Ponji first. (Paul Charrier was one of the people present at Syd's trip in 1965 where he was intrigued for hours by a matchbox, a plum and an orange. This event later inspired Storm Thorgerson for the Syd Barrett (compilation album) record cover and an impressive and moving Pink Floyd backdrop movie.)

John Paul Robinson had his own demons to deal with and in the Sixties he visited a progressive therapist who administered him LSD to open his doors of perception. Only after he had returned from India he ‘literally seemed to be shining with abundance’, passing the message to all his friends that he had been reborn. Ponji gave up his job, wanted to lead the life of a beggar monk, but his internal demons would take over once in every while.

He'd sit on the stairs with his elbows on his knees and forehead placed carefully at the tips of his fingers, reeling out the same old mantra proclaiming how he was just a tramp, that his body was an illusion, a mere prison, a temporary holding place for his soul.

The story goes that he shouted ‘I refuse to be a coward for the rest of my life’ just before he jumped in front of an oncoming train (1979?).

Kaleidoscope

We only happen to know these people in function of their relationship with Syd Barrett. Their paths crossed for a couple of months and we, the anoraks, are only interested in that one small event as if for the rest of these peoples lives nothing further of interest has really happened.

But the truth is that their encounter with Barrett is just one small glittering diamond out of a kaleidoscope of encounters, adventures, joys, grieves, moments of happiness and sadness. It is the kaleidoscope of life: falling in love and making babies that eventually will make babies on their own. A granddaughter's smile today is of much more importance than the faint remembrance of a dead rock star's smile from over 40 years ago.

The Church should be probing for the kaleidoscope world and not for that one single shiny stone. Syd may have been a star, but our daily universe carries millions of those.

Dedicated to those special ones whose story we will never know.

Thanks to: Iain Moore, Paro नियत (where are you now?)

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press, London, 2007, p. 47, p. 337.
Palacios, Julian: Lost In The Woods, Boxtree, London, 1998, p. 85.
Scurfield, Matthew: I Could Be Anyone, Monticello Malta 2009, p. 151, p. 208, p. 265-266. Photo courtesy of William Pryor, p. 192.

Update 2016: In the 2015 coming of age novel Life Is Just..., Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon describes early sixties Cambridge and the submersion into eastern religions.
Update 2019 08 02: Pip picture added.

Syd meets Meic

A couple of weeks ago this blog published excerpts from Meic Stevens' autobiography Hunangofiant y Brawd Houdini (in Welsh, but awesomely translated by Prydwyn) describing how the Cymry bard encountered Syd Barrett in the late Sixties.

These meetings, as far as the Church is aware, have never been mentioned before, not in any of the four main Syd Barrett biographies and not on any website, blog or forum dedicated to the Pink Floyd frontman. It is a bit weird, seen the fact that the biography already appeared in 2003.

Normally Syd related news, regardless of its triviality, is immediately divulged through the digital spider web tying Syd anoraks together. The Church does not want to take credit for this find, it is thanks to Prydwyn, who contacted the Church, that we now have this information, and we hope that it will slowly seep into the muddy waters of the web. (Strange enough the Church post was almost immediately detected by (Welsh) folk music blogs but completely ignored by the Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett communities. Is the rumour true that there is a general Syd Barrett fatigue going on?)

The psychedelic London Underground was not unlike the rapid transit system that listens to the same name. The counterculture wasn't really an organised movement, but constituted of many, independent stations with tubes going from one station to the other. Some persons travelled a lot, switching from line to line using intersecting stations as apparently Syd Barrett's Wetherby Mansions flat was one, much to the dismal of Duggie Fields who wanted to produce his art in peace.

Syd meets Spike Hawkins

In a YouTube interview Rob Chapman, author of the Syd Barrett biography A Very Irregular Head, recalls how he found out that beatnik and poet Spike Hawkins was an acquaintance of Syd Barrett. He was interviewing Pete Brown for his book and when the interview was over he remarked that some Barrett lyrics had a distinct Spike Hawkins style. At that point Pete Brown remarked: "I think Spike Hawkins knew Syd Barrett." Without that lucky ad hoc comment we would (probably) never have known that the two artists not only knew, but also met, each other at different occassions, although it was probably more a Mandrax haze that tied them rather than the urge to produce some art together.

Syd meets Dominique

The Church already mentioned the names of Meic Stevens, Jenny Spires, Trina Barclay, Margaretta Barclay and her friend, painter and musician Rusty Burnhill (who used to jam with Barrett), Iggy (or Evelyn, who is rather reluctant to talk about the past) and the French Dominique A., who was - at a certain moment - rather close to Barrett.

Dominique is, like they say in French, un cas à part. Unfortunately nobody seems to know what happened to her, but if the six degrees of separation theory is accurate it might not be too difficult to find her. The problem is that nobody remembers if she stayed in Great Britain or returned to France. But if you read this and have a granny, listening to the name Dominique A., who smiles mysteriously whenever you mention the name Pink Floyd, give us a call.

Update May 2011: thanks to its many informants, the Church has traced the whereabouts of Dominique. She currently lives in a small village, close to Bayonne, near the Bay of Biscay (French: Golfe de Gascogne). Unfortunately she doesn't want to talk about the past.

Update June 2018: Iain Moore, aka Emo, uploaded a picture, taken in the mid-Seventies. From left to right: Dominique, Gala (Gaylor?) Pinion, Lyndsay Corner.

Syd meets Carmel

Church member Dark Globe compared the English version of Meic Stevens' biography Solva Blues (2004) with the excerpts of the Welsh version we published at Meic meets Syd and found a few differences. Apart from the fact that Meic Stevens also had an Uncle Syd who appears quite frequently in the book there are some minor additions in the English version, absent from the original Welsh.

The Welsh version notes fore instance that 'Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd came to see us in Caerforiog':

Syd Barrett o Pink Floyd fydde’n dod i’n gweld ni yng Nghaerforiog.

The English version adds a small, but in the life of a Barrett anorak, rather important detail. It reads:

Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd who used to visit us at Caerforiog with his girlfriend Carmel.

It is the first time the Church (and Dark Globe) hears from this lady, and she is probably one of those two-week (or even two-day) girlfriends Mick Rock and Duggie Fields have been talking about.

(Warning Label: The picture just above has been taken from the Mick Rock movie Lost In The Woods, nobody knows for sure who is the mysterious brunette. This blog does not imply she is Dominique A. or Carmel, for that matter.)

Drug problem

The second reference (about Syd visiting the Outlander sessions) also has one addition in the English version. Solva Blues adds the line:

I wouldn't have thought he had a drug problem - no more than most people on the scene.

If there is one returning constant about the underground days it is its general tunnel vision. In the brave new psychedelic world every move, the crazier the better, was considered cool and there was a general consensus to deny any (drug related) problem that could and would occur. Rob Chapman is right when he, in his rather tempestuous style, writes:

What do you do if your lead guitarist is becoming erratic / unstable / unhinged?
Simple.
You send him off round the UK on a package tour (…) with two shows a night for sixteen nights.

Nick Mason acknowledges this illogical (not to use another term) behaviour:

If proof was needed that we were in denial about Syd's state of mind, this was it.
Why we thought a transatlantic flight immediately followed by yet more dates would help (Syd) is beyond believe.

Syd almost meets R.D. Laing

Of course looking for professional psychiatric help in those crazy days wasn't that simple either. Bluntly said: you could choose between the traditional cold shower - electroshock therapy or go for anti-psychiatry.

Although it is impossible to turn back the clock it still is the question if experimental anti-psychiatry would have helped Barrett. In a previous post we have given the example how an experimental therapist administered LSD to a Cantabrigian friend of Syd as an alternative way of therapy and R.D. 'I like black people but I could never stand their smell' Laing was no exception to that.

Pink Floyd's manager Peter Jenner made an appointment for Syd with R.D. Laing, but Syd refused to go on with it, but this didn't withhold Laing to make the following observations as noted down by Nick Mason:

Syd might be disturbed, or even mad. But maybe it was the rest of us (Pink Floyd, note by FA) who were causing the problem, by pursuing our desire to succeed, and forcing Syd to go along with our ambitions.

This is the main theory that is overzealously, but not always successfully, adhered by Chapman in his Syd Barrett biography. R.D. Laing ended his Barrett diagnosis, who he never met, by saying:

Maybe Syd was actually surrounded by mad people.

Although some biographers may think, and there they are probably right, that the other Pink Floyd members may have been an ambitious gravy train inspired gang, there was also the small matter of a 17,000 British Pounds debt that the architectural inspired band members still had to pay off after the split. They didn't burden Syd Barrett, nor Peter Jenner and Andrew King with that. Now that is what the Church calls accountancy.

We now know that giving Syd Barrett the time and space, outside the band, to meddle at his own pace with his own affairs and music was not entirely fruitful either. In the early to mid Seventies Syd Barrett entered a lost weekend that would almost take a decade and that is a blank chapter in every biography, apart from the odd Mad Syd anecdote.

Mini Cooper (based upon a remark from Dark Globe)

It is also interesting that Meic Stevens mentions Syd's Mini Cooper:

He was a very good-looking boy, always with a beautiful girl on his arm when he was out or driving his Mini Cooper.

Presumably this is the same car Syd drove all over England in, following the band, when he was freshly thrown out of the Floyd.

Syd swapped this Mini Cooper for a Pontiac Parisienne (and not a Buick as car fanatic Nick Mason writes, although Buick and Pontiac were of course closely related brands) with T-Rex percussionist Mickey Finn in the beginning of 1969, which would date the first meetings between Stevens and Barrett prior to the Mick Rock photo sessions.

But that photo session has been discussed here ad nauseum already so we won't get further into that. So, my sistren and brethren, bye, bye, till the next time, and don't do anything Iggy wouldn't have done. Especially at this warm weather.

(This article is a (partial) update from this one: Meic meets Syd)

Many thanks go to: Dark Globe for checking the English version of Meic Stevens' autobiography. Prydwyn for checking and translating the Welsh version of Meic Stevens' autobiography.

Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above):

Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 201, p. 227.
Green, Jonathon: Days In The Life, Pimlico, London, 1998, p. 210. (R.D. Laing quote)
Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004, p. 87-88, p. 95, p. 129.
Stevens, Meic: Hunangofiant y Brawd Houdini, Y Lolfa, Talybont, 2009, p. 190-191, p. 202.
Stevens, Meic, Solva Blues, Talybont, 2004 (English, slightly updated, translation of the above).

Rob Chapman's An Irregular Head biography has been reviewed at: The Big Barrett Conspiracy Theory

There was a time when I would put in the latest Orb CD and murmur blimey! Blimey because The Orb pleasantly surprised me or blimey because Alex 'LX' Paterson and band utterly frustrated me. They had that effect on me for years from their very first album Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (1991) until the quite underrated Cydonia (2001). Often the wow! and meh! impression could be witnessed on the same disk, most notably on Orbus Terrarum that probably contains the freakiest ambient track ever (the heavenly Oxbow Lakes) but also some of the worst.

The Millennium Orb

After 2001 Paterson continued to make albums under the Orb banner but the wow! effect has largely disappeared. His most prolific output lays on quite a few (from good to excellent) compilation and/or remix albums: Dr. Alex Paterson's Voyage Into Paradise, Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond The Call Of Duty (containing an Orb remix of Rick Wright's Runaway), Bless You (the best of the Badorb label), Orbsessions I and II (outtakes), Back To Mine, The Art Of Chill and last but not least The BBC Sessions.

For ages The Orb has been called the Pink Floyd of ambient dance but the only fusion between both bands is the use of some Pink Floyd samples on early Orb anthems (the four note Shine On You Crazy Diamond signature tune on A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld) and the presence of Pink Floyd bass player ad interim Guy Pratt on a couple of Orb albums.

Contrary to a stubborn belief the so-called ambient (and illegal) Pink Floyd remix albums from the Nineties are not the work from The Orb, nor from Alex Paterson. Neither will we ever know Pink Floyd's retaliation: when the band worked on their 1994 The Divison Bell album they ended up with so many left-over material that - in the words of Nick Mason - "we considered releasing it as a second album, including a set we dubbed The Big Spliff, the kind of ambient mood music that we were bemused to find being adopted by bands like The Orb".

Update 2015 01 15: Parts of The Big Spliff may have appeared on the latest Pink Floyd album: The Endless River. See our review: While my guitar gently weeps... 

Rumours...

Exactly one year ago Alex Paterson, who has always been a bit of a bigmouth, revealed:

I’ve just started work on an album with David Gilmore (sic) from Pink Floyd which I think every Orb and Pink Floyd fan will want to hear.

But that news was hurriedly demoted by David Gilmour.

Recent comments by ambient exponents The Orb's Alex Paterson that they have been collaborating with David Gilmour are true – up to a point. David has done some recording with The Orb and producer Youth, inspired initially by the plight of Gary McKinnon. However, nothing is finalised, and nothing has been confirmed with regards to any structure for the recordings or firm details re: any release plans.

On the 17th of August of this year, however, the David Gilmour blog had the following to reveal:

David is not working with The Orb on a new album, contrary to some reports, but you may remember that he had been in the studio jamming with Martin “Youth” Glover in recent months. (…) Alex Paterson was not involved in the sole jamming session and the only plan initially was for David to play guitar on that one track.

However, as it turns out and as you can see, the result of that jam session has now been spread across the next Orb album, Metallic Spheres, which will be released as ‘The Orb featuring David Gilmour’. So there you have it. He was working on an album with The Orb. Sort of.

Floydian friction

If I may read a bit between the lines I feel some friction here between Sir David and this Orb thingy. But the next day, David Gilmour's official website had the next comment:

David's 2009 jam session with ambient collective The Orb has grown into an album, Metallic Spheres, to be released via Columbia/Sony Records in October. David's contribution to the charity song Chicago, in aid of Gary McKinnon, sparked the interest of producer Youth (Martin Glover), who remixed the track and invited David to his studio for a recording session.

With additional contributions from Orb co-founder Alex Paterson, the album took shape from 2009 into 2010, eventually becoming Metallic Spheres, to be released by The Orb featuring David Gilmour. (underlined by FA.)

Bollocks

Calling LX Paterson an Orb co-founder is technically not untrue, but it feels a little weird when you have just been presenting Martin 'Youth' Glover. It is comparable to describing Syd Barrett as a Pink Floyd co-founder while discussing Bob Klose. Agreed, Youth (from Killing Joke fame) was probably around when The Orb saw the light of day but it is generally acknowledged that the band was formed in 1988 by Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty but not by Youth who only occasionally teamed up with Alex Paterson as a temporary aid. Cauty's primary project however, the Kopyright Liberation Front (with Bill Drummond), pretty soon outgrew The Orb and when - at a certain point in time - some Orb remixes were released in Germany as KLF remixes this provoked a rupture in the co-operation between the duo as Alex and Jimmy started fighting over… copyrights.

After the split between KLF and The Orb Martin 'Youth' Glover helped LX out with two tracks (on two separate albums): Little Fluffy Clouds (on 'Adventures', 1991) and Majestic (on U.F.Orb, 1992), but he never was a member of the band and certainly not a founding member. In 2007 however, Youth replaced Thomas Fehlmann and joined The Orb for a one album project: The Dream.

Update 2018: Youth can also be found on the 2018 'No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds' and on a 2016 live CD and DVD release of the band.

...and gossip

Together with the announcement on David Gilmour's website, and then we're back on the 18th of August of this year, a promotional video for the Metallic Spheres album is uploaded to YouTube. Depicting only Youth and David Gilmour several Orb fans wonder where LX Paterson, and thus The Orb, fits in.

The first, original movie disappears after a couple of days for so-called 'copyright' reasons and is rapidly replaced with a second version (unfortunately taken down as well, now), containing some hastily inserted images of LX Paterson strolling through the grasslands and recording some outdoor musique concrète.

It feels, once again, as if the Floyd-Orb connection doesn't go down well at the Gilmour camp. Alex Paterson's image, so it seems, has only been included on the promo video after some pressure (from LX himself) took place. But the above is of course all pure speculation and not based upon any fact, so tells you Felix Atagong, who has been closely following The Orb for over two decades.

Gary McKinnon

Bit by bit we learn how the album came into place. It all started with David Gilmour's charity project for Gary McKinnon, an X-Files adhering half-wit who hacked into American military and NASA computers in order to find out about extra-terrestrial conspiracy theories (read some more about that on: Metallic Spheres). Because of this he faces extradition from England to the USA where apparently they take these kind of idiots very seriously, see also the 43rd president who governed the country from 2001 to 2009.

It is not quite clear if Gilmour asked Youth (David Glover) to make a remix of the Chicago charity tune or if Youth got hold of the project and proposed to help (I've come across both explanations). The two may know each other through Guy Pratt who played in Glover's band Brilliant in 1986 (LX Paterson was their roadie for a while). In 1990 Youth founded Blue Pearl with Durga McBroom who had toured with Pink Floyd for the previous three years. Amongst the session musicians on their Naked album are Guy Pratt, David Gilmour and Rick Wright.

This isn't Glover's only connection with the Floyd however. In 1995 he teamed up with Killing Joke colleague Jaz Coleman to arrange and produce a symphonic tribute album: Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd, but only The Old Tree With Winding Roots Behind The Lake Of Dreams remix from Time combines a modern beat with romantic classical music.

Island Jam

To spice up the Chicago remix Youth invited David Gilmour in his home studio and out of it came a twenty minutes guitar jam. Glover soon found out that he could expand the session into an ambient suite and asked old chum LX Paterson for some help. LX flavoured the pieces with typical Orbian drones and samples, rather than turning this into a sheepish Fireman-clone.

The Orb featuring David Gilmour can only be a win/win situation. Orb fans have dreamed about this collaboration for the past two decades and that will add to the sales figures for sure. And although artist royalties go to the support of Gary McKinnon there will always be a spillover effect for the artists involved. That can only be good news for The Orb whose last album Baghdad Batteries sunk faster than the Kursk in the Barents Sea.

Rest us to say that an Orb album is an Orb album when it has got the name Orb on it, whether you like it or not. (In the case of their Okie Dokie album, not a bit).

Metallic Spheres

Metallic Spheres starts with Gilmour's pedal steel guitar over some keyboard drones that makes me think of those good old days when the KLF shattered the world with their ambient masterpiece Chill Out (LX Paterson - as a matter of fact - contributed to that album, although uncredited). But soon after that Gilmour's guitar wanders off in his familiar guitar style with axiomatic nods to The Wall and The Division Bell albums. A welcome intermezzo is Black Graham with acoustic guitar, not from Gilmour but by ragtime busker Marcia Mello. The 'metallic side' flows nicely throughout its 29 minutes and has fulfilled its promise of being 'the ambient event of the year' quite accurately.

The CD is divided into two suites: a 'metallic side' and a 'spheres side' (and each 'side' is subdivided in five - not always discernable - parts). The second suite however, is more of the same, clearly lacks inspiration and ends out of breath at the 20 minutes mark.

So no wow! effect here (but no meh! either)... Youth has done what was expected from him and produced an all-in-all agreeable but quite mainstream product leaving ardent anoraky Orb fans with their hunger, but perhaps winning a few uninitiated souls.

As far as I am concerned this is about the best Orb CD I have heard for the past couple of years, but it is still far from Orblivion, U.F.Orb or Ultraworld. But as this is 2010 already you won't hear me complaining.

Versions

In true Orbian tradition this album exists in different versions. There is the regular UK version (with a 'black' cover) and the deluxe version (with a 'white' cover). That last one has a bonus CD in a 3D60 headphone remix, comparable to the holophonics system on Pink Floyd's 'The Final Cut' album from 1983.

Update 2018: Just like 'holophonics' in the eighties, 3D60 no longer exists. The 'special' effects can only be heard through a headphone, but don't expect anything spectacular.

A Japanese enhanced Blu-spec release has two additional bonus tracks and two videos. One of these extra tracks (remixes, actually) could also be downloaded from The Orb website and from iTunes. One of the videos has been made by Stylorouge, who worked with Storm Thorgerson on several Floydian projects.

Last but not least there is a Columbia promo version, containing a unique identification number to trace unauthorised redistribution (see above picture). To our, but probably not to Gilmour's, amusement this promo-CD is titled The Orb Vs Dave Gilmour (instead of David). According to at least one Orb fan this version has a different mix than the official release.

The Orbian 'Metallic Spheres' posts:
Pink Dreams 
Metallic Spheres 
The Relic Samples 

What you see at the left is the only remaining copy in the world of an unreleased 1967 Pink Floyd single: Vegetable Man / Scream Thy Last Scream.
Approximate value: 10,000 US dollars, even on a rainy day.

Part one: Holy Syd!

The songs are on an acetate disc and without going too much into detail we can simply say that an acetate is a test pressing of a vinyl record. An acetate has not been made to last and every time a needle reads the groove the acetate is gradually but irrecoverably damaged. Bands and producers often used acetates to test how a record would sound on cheap home record players before sending the master tape to the record factory.

This precious copy is in the hands of Saq, an American collector in Los Angeles who acquired it about 15 years ago and has cherished it ever since. It is, without doubt, what collectors call a 'holy grail': a rare, valuable object sought after by other collectors. One of the side effects of a 'holy grail' is that it can only acquire that status if other collectors are aware of its existence, but not too many. If nobody knows you have an exclusive item it might as well not exist. Syd Barrett already acknowledged this in his Arnold Layne song: it 'takes two to know'.

Holy grails can be frail, especially when they only consist of audio material. One popular Pink Floyd holy grail are, sorry: were, the so-called work in progress tapes of The Wall (most people, websites and bootlegs refer to these as The Wall demos, which they are clearly not, but that is an entirely different discussion). Around 1999 they circulated amongst top-notch collectors and were generally unknown to the public, The Anchor included, until a track called The Doctor (an early version of Comfortably Numb) was leaked as an alt.music.pink-floyd Christmas 2000 gift. It didn't take long before the complete set was weeded to the fans, who were happy to say the least except for the one of the few who had lost their priceless treasure.

Part two: the guns of Navarro

When Barrett fan Giuliano Navarro met Saq in 2009 he was let on the secret and from this moment Giuliano became a man with a mission. He received pictures of the acetate and finally, on the 15th of January 2011, he proudly announced at Late Night:

I tried to stay in communication with him for more than a year and begged him to at least have the tracks recorded. He agreed to do me the favour, and sent the acetate to a professional studio in San Francisco. (...)

After more than a year of waiting, I finally got the tracks and now I want to share them with all of you. We are the real Syd Barrett crazies and we all deserve to listen to his art. There should be no discovery made that ends up back in the vaults.

Giuliano Navarro is, without doubt, a man of honour. But it helped that Saq didn't really ran the risk that making the content public would ruin his holy grail (as with The Wall WIP tapes). Quite the contrary:
he still has an ultra-rare acetate from 1967;
is envied by collectors from over the world and, knowing that;
the value of this unique recording can only sky-rocket.

At least that is what he thought until about a couple of weeks ago.

Part three: cracks in the ice

An uproarious bigmouth called Felix Atagong, who also goes by the ridiculous epithet Reverend of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, proposed Giuliano to upload the sound files to Yeeshkul. At first the recordings were received with great enthusiasm, but after some days the place was stirring with comments of an entirely different nature.

Yeeshkul is a place where Pink Floyd audio collectors meet and share files through a torrent network. They vary from the average je-ne-sais-quoi fan to the specialised sound freak who has the means and the knowledge to find out whether a certain audio file comes from an earlier or a later generation tape. And obviously this spectacular find was going to be analysed to the bit...

Navarro received MP3 files taken from the acetate and shared these immediately with the fans. Not unusual as MP3 is about the most popular sound format in the world, but it does compress the sound and reduces the quality. The Yeeshkul specialist sound brigade argue that lossless files in 24/96 (or even 24/192) should exist as well. Nobody will be that stupid to put an ultra-rare (and very fragile) acetate on a turntable, only to convert the audio to MP3.

Vince666 did a spectrum analysis of the MP3 files and found that the sound had been mysteriously cut-off at 16 Khz (see left side image). Some members maintain that this is a typical result of MP3 compression, but others disagree. But despite the compression and the obvious quality-loss these mono tracks still sound a lot better than other versions that have been circulating for decades.

Felixstrange (no relative to the Church) discovered 'something which sounds a lot like tape damage at 0:54 during "Scream Thy Last Scream':

The noise a minute into STLS is definitely a result of creases in magnetic tape. However, there is definitely vinyl/acetate surface noise present. I've been doing a lot of vinyl rips lately and I immediately recognized the all-too-familiar clicks of debris in the grooves of a record.

Question: How can a brand new, original EMI master show tape damage, before it has even been used to make vinyl records out of it?
Answer: It can't.

Part four: screaming vegetables

Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream (let's shorten that to VM and STLS, shall we?) are both unreleased Syd Barrett - Pink Floyd gems from 1967. EMI has been tempted to put these on compilations before, but for different (copyright) reasons that never happened, luckily two different mixes have leaked to the public.

When (The) Dark Side Of The Moon proved successful EMI compiled early Floyd as A Nice Pair and put the two Barrett solo-albums together in a Syd Barrett budget release. The selling figures (especially in the USA where the solo albums had never been released) were important enough for EMI to beg for a third Syd Barrett solo album. Producer Peter Jenner soon found out that Syd Barrett really wasn't in the singing mood and scraped the barrel in order to find some unreleased material.

On the 13th of August 1974 Peter Jenner (with a little help from John Leckie and Pat Stapley) mixed a stereo tape of unreleased Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd originals, including VM and STLS. This tape, with reference 6604Z, almost immediately evaporated from the EMI archives and re-materialised – so goes the legend – miraculously in one of Bernard White's cupboards.

Almost day by day thirteen years later, Malcolm Jones compiled his personal 'Syd Barratt (sic) Rough Mixes'. It is believed that he accidentally lost this tape just when he was passing by the front door of an anonymous bootlegger.

Part five: check your sources

The Anchor needs to get a bit nerdy and technical here, like those Bible scholars who combine different fourth century Greek editions in order to reconstruct the ultimate Bible source. We are going to compare the different versions of the tracks, so you have been warned.

Barrett fans have strong reasons to believe that the Malcolm Jones 1987 (mono) tapes are the closest to the original 1967 Pink Floyd recordings. In 1974 Peter Jenner added extra effects, echo and reverb to the mix, most notably on VM, and these are absent on the Malcolm Jones tape. The Malcolm Jones mix of STLS fades out, while Jenner's version ends abruptly with – yet – another sound effect.

That is not all. In the case of Vegetable Man there is even a third mix - the so-called Beechwoods tape. It has survived on tape from a 1969 radio show where Nick Mason opened his Pandora’s box of 1967 outtakes. A fan found it back in 2001 and promptly donated it to Kiloh Smith from Madcaps Laughing.

As the acetate allegedly dates from 1967;
Vegetable Man must sound like the Beechwoods version, and
Scream Thy Last Scream must sound like the Malcolm Jones rough mix.

Right?
Wrong.

Part six: listen to the music

Yeeshkul member MOB compared all known versions and came back with the following report.

Vegetable Man:

The acetate mix is mono, but definitely different than the Malcolm Jones mono mix from 1987.

The 1967 acetate mix is also different from the 1967 Beechwoods tape, believed to be the most authentic studio version of the song. On the Beechwoods tape, there is absolutely no echo or reverb during the sentence "Vegetable man where are you" but they are present on the acetate.

The only version with extra echo and reverb is the 1974 stereo mix by Peter Jenner.

MOB concludes:

Actually, if I take the 1974 Jenner stereo mix and convert it to mono, I have the same mix as the "acetate" mix. So to me it seems the current mix is not from 1967 (if it was the case it should be close to the 1967 Beechwoods mix, and it's not), but from 1974.

Maybe the 1974 Jenner versions were copied, traded, with some "mono-ization" in the lineage, then pressed as fake acetates?

Scream Thy Last Scream:

The 1967 acetate mono mix is not the same as the Jones 1987 mono mix (the Jones version fades out during the street noises). Instead of that, on the acetate mix, the street noises end abruptly with an echo effect.

MOB:

Is it pure coincidence that the echo is exactly the same effect as the one used by Jenner during his 1974 mixdown?

Again, if you mono-ize the 1974 Jenner mix, you have the current acetate mix (minus the scratches and tape flaws). Same effects at the same moments.

Part seven: the time-paradox explanation

Of course this all makes sense, especially in a Barrett universe, and the contradiction can easily be explained.

Somewhere in 1967 Barrett invented a time-travelling device by combining a clock with a washing machine. When asked to compose a third single he hopped to 1974, stole tape number 6604Z from the EMI archives and returned to 1967.

Thus it is perfectly logical that the 1967 acetate sounds exactly like the 1974 Jenner mix and en passant we have solved the mystery how the tape has disappeared from the EMI vaults.

The utterly boring explanation is that the 1967 acetate is fake, counterfeit, a forgery, made by a scrupulous thief to rob a few thousands of dollars from a collector’s pocket. In other words: mono-ization turned into monetisation.

Part eight: let's get physical

The Anchor is like one of those boring Roger Waters songs: once we're in a drive, we can't stop and we have to make extra parts of the same monotonous melody over and over again.

Even without listening to the counterfeit acetate there still is something dubious about it (thanks neonknight, emmapeelfan,...).

Due to their production process and their fragility acetates are - most of the time - single sided, just like the surviving acetates of Arnold Layne and See Emily Play. Albums were even issued on two different single sided acetates to avoid further damage (but some double sided acetates do exist, like the very first Pink Floyd recording with Bob Klose in the band: Lucy Leave / King Bee [but that was definitely not an EMI acetate]);

Engineers at EMI were invariably nerdy administrative types, who attended recording sessions dressed in white lab coats. These cheeky little fellows would never label an acetate without putting the name of the band on top;

Although a pretty fair forgery the label on the record is not identical to the 'official' EMI acetate label, there also seem to be some glue marks that are usually not present on real acetates;

and last but not least;

Acetates are ad hoc test pressings and in the extremely rare case of a double acetate this means that a certain relationship has to exist between both tracks, like both sides from a single or takes from the same session. STLS was recorded on 7 August 1967 (some overdubs were made in December 1967 and January 1968 for a possible inclusion on A Saucerful of Secrets). VM was recorded between 9 and 12 October 1967. They were never meant to be each other's flip side on a single, so finding them on the same acetate simply makes no sense, unless it is a fake, of course.

Part nine: a spoonful of charades

So basically here is what happened:

1. someone, somewhere in summertime, got hold of the Peter Jenner 1974 stereo-mixes of VM and STLS (not that weird as they have been circulating for at least 3 decades);

2. these were copied on a tape (perhaps even a cassette for home entertainment) but unfortunately it was damaged, trampled, eaten and vomited out by the player (crumpled sound between 51 and 55 seconds);

3. this cassette was downgraded from stereo to mono;

4. the mono 'remaster' was cut on acetate, a fake EMI label was glued on it, and sold to a collector (probably in the mid Nineties);

5. the acetate, believed to be genuine by its owner, was copied in a professional studio to (hopefully) a lossless digital format (there are vinyl record clicks to prove that);

6. the digital copy was then converted to MP3 (with a compression cut off at 16 Khz) and torrented through Yeeshkul.

Part ten: let's add some extra confusion

It has now been established that the 1967 acetate is fake and a mere mono copy of the 1974 stereo mix, but there is still some confusion and a bit of hope.

Although a copy from a copy from a copy the acetate sounds better, crispier and fuller than the Jenner mixes that are currently circulating. To put it into technical gobbledygook: the forger has a better sounding, earlier generation tape at his disposal than the one that Barrett collectors have now. This is something what duly pisses most Syd anoraks off.

Instead of sharing the tape to the fans it has been used to produce bootleg acetates. One can assume that the criminal sold more than one unique acetate, so there must be other collectors around who have purchased this record, believing they had the only copy in the world.

The high-priced acetate market is not that big. Perhaps if we stick together, we can trace the seller who must now tremble like a leaf, and before cutting off his balls and roasting them on a fire, confiscate the low generation tape and use it for the better.

Part eleven: last words

What you see at the left is an acetate counterfeit of a nonexistent 1967 Pink Floyd single
Vegetable Man / Scream Thy Last Scream.
Approximate value: 10 US dollars, not a cent more.

Let us be fair: not all is lost for Saq, the current owner.

The Anchor has got an excellent business relationship with Fine Art Auctioneers & Valuers Bonhams. For a small 35% commission rate the Anchor is willing to put the acetate on sale at Bonhams as they already have a habit of selling overcharged fake Barrett memorabilia: Bonhams Sells Fake Barrett Poem.

The Anchor wishes to thank: Saquib Rasheed, Giuliano Navarro, Hallucalation, Vince666, Felixstrange, MOB, Neonknight, Emmapeelfan and the other participants at Late Night and Yeeshkul.

Late Night forum thread: Vegetable Man / Scream Thy Last Scream (Acetate Recordings)
Yeeshkul forum thread: Pink Floyd - "Vegetable Man / Scream Thy Last Scream" from rare acetate, 1967 (members only)

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.

The next months will be musically dedicated to Pink Floyd and several, if not all, of the serious music magazines are hanging a separate wagon at EMI's gravy train.

Classic Rock 162 (with AC/DC on the cover) comes with a separate Pink Floyd 24 pages booklet, titled at one side: The making of the Dark Side Of The Moon, and at the other side (when you turn the booklet around) The making of Wish You Were Here, written by Pink Floyd biographer Glenn Povey, with pictures of Jill Furmanovsky.

Mojo 215, ridiculously called the October 2011 edition while we purchased it now in August (somebody ought to tell those Mojo editors what a calendar is), has a 12 pages Pink Floyd cover story from Pigs Might Fly author Mark Blake and with pictures from... Jill Furmanovsky, but more about that later.

Rock Prog (out on August 31) will be celebrating the 40-th birthday of Meddle, an album that – according to their blurb – changed the sound of Pink Floyd and prog rock forever.

But we start with the most recent Uncut (that has a Marc Bolan / T-Rex cover, but it didn't cross the Channel yet) where Nick Mason expresses his belief that there still is room for a combined Piper/Saucerful Immersion set. That extended CD-box-set would have early Pink Floyd rarities as Vegetable Man and Scream Thy last Scream but also...

...we've got some demos that were made really early on, which I think are just charming. these come from 1965 and include 'Lucy Leave', "I'm A King Bee", "Walk With Me Sydney", and "Double O-Bo". They're very R'n'B. Of course we were yet another English band who wanted to be an American style R'n'B band. We recorded the demo at Decca. I think it must have been, in Broadhurst Gardens. A friend of Rick's was working there as an engineer, and managed to sneak us in on a Saturday night when the studio wasn't operating.

As all Immersion sets come with some live recordings as well all eyes (or ears) are pointing into the direction of the Gyllene Cirkeln gig that was recently sold by its taper to the Floyd. But Mark Jones, known for his extensive collection of early Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett pictures, heard something else from his contacts at Pink Floyd Ltd. He fears that this gig will not be put on an early Floyd immersion set:

I doubt it, my answer from someone 'high up' was 'the Stockholm recording does not feature Syd's vocals'. I take that means either his mic was not functioning properly or he was singing off mic. (…) My answer was from 'high up' and from what I gathered it meant they weren't releasing it!

Like we have pointed out in a previous article (see: EMI blackmails Pink Floyd fans!) the September 1967 live set does not have audible lyrics, due to the primitive circumstances the gig has been recorded with (or simply because Syd didn't sing into the microphone). But that set also has some instrumentals that could be put on a rarities disk: a 7 minutes 20 seconds unpublished jam nicknamed 'Before or Since' (title given by the taper), Pow R Toc H (without the jungle sounds?) and Interstellar Overdrive.

It will be a long wait as an early Immersion set can only see the light of day in late 2012 and only after the other sets have proven to be successful.

Update 2016 11 11: that Piper 'Immersion' set, with the Gyllene Cirkeln gig, has been officially issued in the Early Years box set: Supererog/Ation: skimming The Early Years.

Nick Sedgwick's manuscript

Back to Mojo with its Dark Side Of The Moon / Wish You Were Here cover article. Obviously the 'Syd visits Pink Floyd' anecdote had to be added in as well and at page 88 Mark Blake tells the different versions of this story once again (some of them can also be found in here: The Big Barrett Conspiracy Theory).

In his Lost In Space article Mark Blake also retells the almost unknown story about an unpublished Pink Floyd book that has been lying on Roger Waters' shelves for about 35 years. After the gigantic success of Dark Side Of The Moon the band, or at least Roger Waters, found it a good idea to have a documentary of their life as successful rock-stars. Waters asked his old Cambridge friend and golf buddy Nick Sedgwick to infiltrate the band and to note down his impressions. Another sixties Cambridge friend was called in as well: Storm Thorgerson, who hired Jill Furmanovsky to take (some of) the pictures of the 1974 American tour. Nick and Storm could follow the band far more intimately than any other journalist or writer as they had been beatnik buddies (with Syd, David and Roger) meeting in the Cambridge coffee houses in the Sixties. In his 1989 novel Light Blue With Bulges Nick Sedgwick clearly describes how a loud-mouthed bass player and the novel's hero share some joints and drive around on their Vespa motorcycles.

Life on the rock road in 1974 was perhaps too much of a Kerouac-like adventure. The band had its internal problems, with Roger Waters acting as the alpha-male (according to David Gilmour in the latest Mojo article). But there weren't only musical differences, Pink Floyd had wives and families but they also had some difficulties to keep up the monogamist life on the road. Then there was the incident with Roger Waters who heard a man's voice at the other side when he called his wife at home.

When David Gilmour read the first chapters of the book he felt aggrieved by it and managed to get it canned, a trick he would later repeat with Nick Mason's first (and unpublished) version of Inside Out. But also Nick Mason agrees that the book by Nick Sedgwick was perceived, by the three others, as being to openly friendly towards Roger Waters and too negative towards the others. Mark Blake, in a Facebook reaction to the Church, describes the manuscript as 'dynamite'.

Unfortunately Nick Sedgwick died a couple of days ago and Roger Waters issued the following statement:

One of my oldest friends, Nick Sedgwick, died this week of brain cancer. I shall miss him a lot. I share this sad news with you all for a good reason.

He leaves behind a manuscript, "IN THE PINK" (not a hunting memoir).

His memoir traces the unfolding of events in 1974 and 1975 concerning both me and Pink Floyd. In the summer of 1974 Nick accompanied me, and my then wife Judy, to Greece. We spent the whole summer there and Nick witnessed the beginnings of the end of that marriage.

That autumn he travelled with Pink Floyd all round England on The Dark Side Of The Moon Tour. He carried a cassette recorder on which he recorded many conversations and documented the progress of the tour. In the spring of 1975 he came to America with the band and includes his recollections of that time also.

When Nick finished the work in 1975 there was some resistance in the band to its publication, not surprising really as none of us comes out of it very well, it's a bit warts and all, so it never saw the light of day.

It is Nick's wish that it be made available now to all those interested in that bit of Pink Floyd history and that all proceeds go to his wife and son.

To that end I am preparing three versions, a simple PDF, a hardback version, and a super de-luxe illustrated limited edition signed and annotated by me and hopefully including excerpts from the cassettes.

For those interested in the more turbulent episodes of the band Pink Floyd this will be a very interesting read indeed.

Update 2016 12 04: the Sedgwick Floyd biography 'In The Pink' has not been published yet. In a 2015 interview for Prog magazine Roger Waters, however, said that the project was still on.
Update 2017 07 30: The 'In The Pink' journal can now be bought at the Pink Floyd Their Mortal Remains exhibition in London or at a Roger Waters gig: see In The Pink hunt is open! 

The Church wishes to thank: Mark Blake, Mark Jones & although he will probably never read this, Roger Waters.

Business as usual at The Anchor. Felix Atagong, that old drunk hippie, was sitting at the bar, ogling some of the mojito girls eagerly discussing Justin Bieber's posterior. At his fifth Guinness Felix usually starts to get all glazzy eyed and wants to start a Pink Floyd fight. Most of the time it suffices to name-drop Rob Chapman to make Atagong throw a tantrum, but there weren't enough spectators today to make this trick worthwhile.

"Alex", he said, "Did I already tell you that David Gilmour wore a Guinness t-shirt during the 1974 French tour, just to piss off their sponsor Gini?" I pretended not having heard this story a dozen times before.

"In 1972", he orated, "Pink Floyd signed a lucrative publicity contract with Gini, a French übersweet soft drink. The band went to the Moroccan desert where they had some shots taken by photographer William Sorano, a fact not a lot of people know of." Felix likes to brag a lot, especially when he gets a bit light in the head.

"Of course Pink Floyd wasn't a millionaire's super group yet when they agreed with the deal. They liked to describe themselves as an underground art band and only the French were daft enough to believe that. British have this national sport to fool the French and for three full decades those have thought that 'pink floyd' was English for 'flamant rose' or 'pink flamingo'. That rumour was started on the mainland by journalist Jean Marie Leduc after he returned from a trip to London in sixty-seven. Asking a freaked-out acid head what a pink floyd really meant he turned into the proverbial sitting duck and eagerly swallowed the bait."

"So whenever Pink Floyd wanted to get arty-farty they only had to hop into the nearest ferry to Calais where they were hauled in as national heroes. One of their sillier projects was to play behind a bunch of men in tights, jumping up and down in an uncoördinated way, and calling that a ballet. Of course there was a kind of 'intellectual snobbery' involved in this all, but even more the Pink Floyd's fine taste for champagne and oysters that was invariably hauled in by the bucket." Felix had certainly reached lift-off and would be raving and drooling now for at least the next half hour to come."

"Another project was the soundtrack for the art movie La Vallée, a typical French vehicle for long pseudo philosophical musings about the richness of primitive culture and the sudden urge of a French bourgeois woman to hug some trees and to hump the local Crocodile Dundee. Part of the movie is in the kind of English that would turn Inspector Clouseau green with envy. What does one expects from a bunch of hippies, making a tedious long journey to a mythical valley they call 'obscured by cloud' (not 'clouds')?"

"The hidden valley is supposed to be a paradise and the story sounds like a cheap rehash of the ridiculous Star Trek episode, The Way To Eden. Over the years journalists and biographers have rumoured that the movie is saved by showing a fair amount of frolicking in the nude, but it miserably fails in that department as well. Quite unusual for a French movie of the early seventies, I might add, as the cinematographic intellectual trend was to show the female form in all its variety. The only bush that can be seen is the New Guinean forest unfortunately."

"Obviously the Floyd couldn't resist this challenge and helped by the easy money soundtracks brought in they were wheeled into a château with a stock of red wine and boeuf bourguignon. Two weeks later they emerged with one of their finest albums ever." Atagong took another drink and belched loudly. This had only been the introduction, I feared, I was right.

"Rick Wright recalls in a 1974 Rock & Folk interview how their manager Steve O'Rourke met a bloke on a French beach, waving a fifty thousand British pounds check in front of him. O'Rourke frantically jumped up and down, like a dancer from a French avant-garde ballet dancing troupe, making hysterically pink flamingo quacking sounds. Little did he know this was going to be first time in Floydian history that the band didn't manage to trick the French, a tradition that started in 1965 when Syd Barrett and David Gilmour busked the French Riviera. Of course it is easy to say in retrospect O'Rourke was duly screwed 'up the khyber' by the Gini coöperation, but in 1972 it appeared not to be such a bad deal after all. Part of the deal was that Gini promised to sponsor a French tour, including radio and television promo spots that unfortunately have not survived into the 21st century."

"The main problem was that in 1973 Pink Floyd suddenly turned into millionaire superstars thanks to Dark Side Of The Moon and that 50,000 pounds was now something they spent on breakfast orange juice. But Gini, waving with the two years old contract, threatened with legal action and the Floyd reluctantly agreed to meet the conditions."

"In the summer of 1974 Floyd hit France and wherever they appeared a publicity caravan of 15 people would follow them. It had cute girls who gave Gini drinks, stickers and fluorescent t-shirts away, 4 'easy riders' on 750 cc super-choppers (painted by Jean-Paul Montagne) and a green 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith (numberplate: 567 AAF 75) with a loud stereo installation. Rumours go that at a certain point the atmosphere was so heated between the Pink Floyd management and Gini that a minimum distance between band and publicity people had to be agreed on. But according to Nick Mason, in his auto-biography Inside Out, it was only the band that got infuriated, the technical crew quite enjoyed the promo girls and they exchanged more than soft drinks alone."

"French journalists immediately accused Pink Floyd of a sell-out and the band rapidly declared that the money was going to charity, something in the line of a school for handicapped children. Rock & Folk squeezed out the names of the Ronald Laing Association and the French hôpital de Salpêtrière, but reality may have been a bit different. Nick Mason told Mojo's Mark Blake this summer that they probably just shelved the money, although David Gilmour and Roger Waters still keep up it was donated. Rest me to say that Waters was so angry at the situation that he wrote an unpublished song about the Gini incident, titled Bitter Love (aka 'How Do You Feel')." Felix Atagong paused a bit, to have a drink, so this was a moment for immediate action.

"Out!", I said, "The Anchor is closed."

"But", retaliated the Reverend, "this was just a mere introduction to start talking about the Wish You Were Here Immersion set that has just been issued and I would like to say something more about the 1967 Stockholm Gyllene Cirkeln show that has finally been weeded out to the public..."

"Out!", I said again, "There is no time for your drunken ramblings any more."

I pushed Felix Atagong out of the door and I heard him staggering back home, murmuring incomprehensible things. He'll be back tomorrow anyway.

(The above article is entirely based upon facts, some situations have been enlarged for satirical purposes.)
The Anchor wishes to thank: Nipote and PF Chopper at Y.

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 179-183, 214.
Blake, Mark: Lost In Space, Mojo 215, October 2011, p. 85.
Feller, Benoît: Complet, Rock & Folk, Paris, July 1974, p. 44.
Leduc, Jean-Marie: Pink Floyd, Editions Albin Michel, Paris, 1982, p. 125.
Mason, Nick: Inside Out, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 197-198.
(unknown): La "caravane" Pink Floyd-Gini, Hit Magazine, Paris, July 1974.

One of the promo Pink Floyd Gini choppers is still around today and has its own Facebook page: The Pink Floyd Chopper.

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.

Despite the fact that the sixties children of the revolution all wanted to express their individualism and refused to be a part of the square 9 to 5 world they all managed to show up at the same places, dress virtually the same and take the same chemical substances.

This also applied for their holidays. Although they had been seeing each other the whole year in old rainy England, in summer they would pack their bags and flee – en masse – to the same cool (but sweaty) locations, following the so-called Hippie Trail.

The Hippie Trail extended to the Himalayas and several Cantabrigian hipsters made it to the Indies, looking for a guru who would teach them things a local vicar couldn't teach them. Paul Charrier, one of the Cantabrigian mods, beats or whatever denomination they liked that week, was one of the first to witness this. When he returned to England and opened his bag of tricks, he managed to convert a few others to the narrow path of Sant Mat, but others, like Storm Thorgerson and Matthew Scurfield, opposed to this 'wave of saccharine mysticism hitting our shores' (see also: We are all made of stars).

India and Pakistan were long and hazardous journeys and for those who only had a few weeks to spend there were always the Balearic islands where they would meet at La Tortuga or La Fonda Pepe.

Some 700 hippies arrived in Formentera in 1968 and by the summer of 1969 there were already 1,300, almost one for every 2.5 islanders. They didn’t stay all year round but were usually university students spending their holidays on the island. In 1970, Franco’s regime threw all 3,000 of them off Ibiza and Formentera. According to the regime, the hippies gave the place a bad name, but the islanders didn’t agree – for them the hippies were simply tourists. (Taken from: Thinkspain.)

Of course the islands of Formentera and Ibiza (Balearic Islands) already had some reputation of their own. The place not only gained popularity by (American) writers and artists after the second world war for its mild climate, but also because it was a central drug smuggling point. The heroes of Beat literature not only liked the bohemian's life, but in their quest for nonconformity they also actively sought contact with 'the perilous margins of society - pimps, whores, drug dealers, petty thieves'.

Quite some Dutch artists visited the place, for one reason or another. The proto-hippie-folk singing duo Nina & Frederik (Dutch-Danish, in fact), who had some hits in the fifties and early sixties, lived there. In his later life Frederik Van Pallandt attempted a career as drug smuggler and his murder in 1994 may have been a direct result. Other artist included poet Simon Vinkenoog, author Jan Cremer and Black & Decker trepanist Bart Huges. The sixties saw visits from the Beatles, the Stones and in their wake some beautiful people from London (for a more detailed list: Ibiza in the beatnik & hippie eras.)

1963

David Gale, his girlfriend Maureen, Dave Henderson, Storm Thorgerson and John Davies went to Ibiza in 1963 for their holidays where they visited Formentera island for a day. Back at home they all decided to have another holiday there.

1965

Mary Wing (and her friend Marc Dessier) found Formentera so beautiful that in 1965 they decided to stay there.

1967

Nick Mason acknowledges that after the '14 hour technicolour dream' (29 April 1967) the band was very tired and that Syd showed more severe symptoms than the others. Despite all that the continuous, eight days a week, gigging went on with the mythical Games For May concert two weeks later (12 May), the memorable Hans Keller BBC interview (14 May) and the See Emily Play recording session (18 May). There were nearly daily concerts or recording sessions between May and June of that year, but little by little cracks started to appear in their overcrowded agenda.

June, 11: two cancelled concerts in Holland
June, 18: public appearance on a bikini fashion show for Radio London, cancelled
June, 24: two cancelled concerts in Corby and Bedford
June, 25: two cancelled concerts in Manchester

On Thursday, July the 27th 1967, the Pink Floyd mimed (for the third time) on the Top Of the Pops show although Barrett was rather reluctant to do it. The next day they had a recording session for the BBC, but apparently Syd was seen leaving the block when it was their turn. This time the band and its management took Syd's behaviour seriously and decided to cancel all August gigs (with the exception of some studio recording sessions).

Update September 2012: one of these cancelled gigs was the 7th National Jazz, Pop, Ballads and Blues Festival that was visited by Iggy the Eskimo: Iggy - a new look in festivals.

Now what would you do when the lead singer of your band has got mental problems due to his abundant drug intake? You send him to a hippie, drug infested, island under the supervision of a psychedelic doctor who thinks that LSD has been been the best invention since masturbation.

Sam [Hutt, aka Smutty] was the underground's very own house doctor, sympathetic to drug users and musicians: as Boeing Duveen And The Beautiful Soup and later Hank Wangford, Sam was able to introduce a performer’s perspective. (Nick Mason)

In 1969 Smutty would have his medical office at Jenny Fabian's apartment: “I did find it a bit weird though, trying to lie around stoned listening to the sounds of vaginal inspections going on behind the curtain up the other end of the sitting-room."

After a first attempt in the studio on Scream Thy Last Scream, Pink Floyd finally went on holiday for the second half of August. Syd Barrett, Lindsay Corner, Rick Wright, Juliette Gale (Wright), Dr. Sam Hutt, his wife and baby went to Formentera while Roger Waters and Judy Trim (Waters) headed for Ibiza. They all had a good time, except for Barrett who – during a storm - panicked so hard he literally tried to climb the walls of the villa, an anecdote that is so vehemently trashed by biographer Rob Chapman that it probably did happen.

In retrospect the decision to take a hippie doctor on holiday wasn't that stupid. One of the underlying ideas was that he would be able to communicate with Syd on the same level. The band, conscientiously or not, were also aware that 'there was a fear that sending Syd to a [traditional] doctor for observation might lead to his being sectioned in a mental hospital'.

In those days most care centres in Great Britain were still Victorian lunatic asylums where medical torture was mildly described as therapy. At least these were the horrid stories told by the people who had been so lucky to escape.

He showed me to the room that was to be mine. It was indeed a cell. There was no door knob on the inside, the catch had been jammed so that the door couldn't be shut properly, the window was high up in the wall and had bars over it, and there was only a standard issue bed and locker as furniture. (William Pryor)

Nobody wanted this to happen to Syd, but a less prosaic thought was this would have meant the end of the band, something that had to be carefully avoided. “The idea was to get Syd out of London, away from acid, away from all his friends who treated him like a god.”, Rick Wright explained but in reality Dr. Hutt, and the others, merely observed Syd Barrett, catatonic as ever and still 'munching acid all the time'. Nick Mason, in his usual dry style: “It was not a success.”

Whoever thought that giving Barrett a few weeks of rest was going to evaporate the demons from his brain must have been tripping himself and on the first of September the agenda was resumed as if nothing had happened. The first 6 days were filled with gigs and recording sessions. Three days later a Scandinavian tour with the legendary Gyllene Cirkeln and Starclub gigs, followed by an Irish Tour and later, in October, the disastrous North American Tour...

Although the previous paragraphs may seem harsh they are not meant to criticise the people nor their actions. It is easy to pinpoint what went wrong 45 years ago, but as it is impossible to predict an alternative past we will never know if any other action would have had a different or better effect. The Reverend is convinced that Syd's friends, band members and management tried to do their best to help him, but unfortunately they were running in the same insane treadmill as he was. Syd wasn't the only one to be exhausted and at the same time the atmosphere was imbibed with the 'summer of love' philosophy of respecting someone's personal freedom, even if it lead to self-destruction...

1968

In 1968 Aubrey 'Po' Powell (Floydian roadie and later Hipgnosis member) visited the Formentera island together with some friends.

I first came here forty-one years ago [interview taken in 2009, FA] with David Gilmour, and then the year afterwards with Syd Barrett. The first year I came to Formentera I stayed about four months living like a hippie, and I just fell in love with it. (…) Also it was kind of difficult to get to. You had to get the plane to Ibiza and then the ferry which at that time was the only ferry that went between Ibiza and Formentera and that took about two hours to get across and it only went twice a day. So it was an effort to get there, you know, it was a rather remote place. But a lot of writers, painters and musicians gravitated there. (Taken from: Aubrey Powell: Life, light and Formentera’s influence on Hipgnosis.)

1969

Shortly after Syd Barrett watched the first moon-landing (that had been given a Pink Floyd soundtrack on the BBC) he panicked when he found out that his pal Emo (Iain Moore) and a few others (Po, John Davies) had left Albion for sunny Formentera. He literally grabbed a bag of cash and dirty clothes and headed to Heathrow, driven there by Gala Pinion.

The story goes that Syd tried to stop an aeroplane taxiing on the tarmac. In at least one version the plane actually stopped and took him on board, but other say he had to wait for the next departure. Again it is biographer Rob Chapman who categorises this anecdote as 'unsubstantiated nonsense', on the weird assumption that it failed to make the newspapers, but other biographies have also omitted this story for simply being too unbelievable.

Anyway, somewhere in July or early August 1969 Syd arrived in Ibiza and met Emo who was on his way to San Fernando (Formentera). The biographies Crazy Diamond (Mike Watkinson & Pete Anderson), Madcap (Tim Willis) and Dark Globe (Julian Palacios) all add bits and pieces to that particular holiday.

Iain Moore: “He had a carrier bag of clothes that I could smell from where I was standing.”

Emo says Syd's behaviour was pivoting like a see-saw. One moment he could be seen laughing, joking and singing with the gang; the next moment he could snap into an emotional freeze. It was useless to warn him for the blistering sun and in the end his friends 'had to grab him, hold him down, and cover him from head to toe in Nivea'.

At Formentera Syd stayed with Mary Wing, who had left Great Britain in 1965 to live on the island with Marc Dessier. According to them Barrett was a gentle soul but 'like a little brother who needed looking after'. Barrett was in good form and to an audience of European hippies he claimed he was still the leader of Pink Floyd.

Barrett borrowed Dessier's guitar: “Then he sat there, chose a letter of the alphabet and thought of his three favourite words starting with the same letter. He wrote them on three bits of paper, threw them in the air and wrote them again in the order that he picked them up.” This technique was not uncommon for beat poets and Syd may have been inspired by Spike Hawkins who showed Barrett his Instant Poetry Broth book the year before.

One Formantera picture shows Syd with an unknown girl who hides her nudity behind a red veil. The (copyrighted) picture can be found on John Davies MySpace page (image link) and has been published in the Crazy Diamond biography and on A Fleeting Glimpse.

For Pink Floyd buffs the picture shares a resemblance with the red veil picture on the Wish You Were Here liner bag, that actually exists in a few different versions. Storm Thorgerson has used the past from the band and its members for his record covers, backdrop movies and videos on several occasions, like the Barrett vinyl compilation that had a cover with a plum, an orange and a matchbox.

Hipgnosis collaborator 'Po' Powell was with Syd in Formentera in 1969, but what does Storm Thorgerson has to say about it all? He reveals that the idea for the veil came from John Blake, and not from Po:

John Blake suggested using a veil – symbol of absence (departure) in funerals ans also a way of absenting (hiding) the face. This was the last shot (…) which was photographed in Norfolk.

And in Mind Over Matter:

The red muslin veil is an universal item, or symbol, of hiding the face, either culturally as in Araby, or for respect as in funerals. What's behind the veil?

Formentera Lady

According to Nick Mason a female nude can be seen on the Wish You Were Here inside cover but of course this doesn't say anything about the unknown woman on Formentera. Who is she?

Nobody knows. And that secret remained a secret for over 40 years.

Now let's suppose a witness would show up who remembers she has been seen walking near Earl's Court.
And that she was called Sarah Sky although that probably was not her real name.
And that she spoke with a foreign accent and lived in London.
And that Sarah Sky vanished around the late 1970's and has never been heard of since.

Partially solving a problem only makes it bigger. A new quest has begun.

Updates

Iain Moore

Update 2012.05.26: According to Emo (Iain Moore) Sarah Sky may have been one of the girls who went with them to Formentera. The Syd Barrett Archives (Facebook) have the following quote:

Actually, I spoke to Emo last night and he said she was just another person who was staying at the house they rented. It was a nudist beach, lol. At least Syd kept his pants on this time! (…)
Anyway, Emo said they didn't know her and he couldn't remember who she was with. (...)
The girl in this photo is name unknown. She was American and staying in a house in Ibiza. She was visiting Formentera for the day.

Iain has, since then, reconfirmed that the Formentera Girl was an American tourist. He has also posted a new picture of Syd and the girl.

Nigel Gordon

Update August 2012: Author and movie maker Nigel Gordon does not agree with a quote in the above text, taken from Matthew Scurfield:

I just want to respond briefly to your article on Formentera etc where you wrote or quote that Santmat is ‘saccharine mysticism’. I don’t agree with you. Santmat recommends that we meditate for two and a half hours a day. It’s pretty ‘salty’!

Uschi Obermaier

Update February 2015: Some 'sources' on the web pretend the Formentera girl is none other than German photo-model Uschi Obermaier. Obviously this is not true and if you want to know how the Church came to this conclusion you can read everything at Uschi Obermaier: Proletarian Chic.

Many thanks to: Nina, Ebronte, Julian Palacios, Jenny Spires.

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 90, 131.
Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 228, 341.
Davis, John: Childhood's End, My Generation Cambridge 1946-1965.
De Groot, Gerard: The Sixties Unplugged, Pan Macmillan, London, 2009, p. 27.
Gordon, Nigel: Santmat, email, 18.08.2012.
Green, Jonathon: Days In The Life, Pimlico, London, 1998, p. 286.
Green, Jonathon: All Dressed Up, Pimlico, London, 1999, p. 255.
Mason, Nick, Inside Out, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 95-97.
Palacios, Julian: A mile or more in a foreign clime': Syd and Formentera @ Syd Barrett Research Society, 2009 (forum no longer active).
Palacios, Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p. 265, 353.
Pryor, William: The Survival Of The Coolest, Clear Books, 2003, p. 106.
Scurfield, Matthew: I Could Be Anyone, Monticello Malta 2009, p. 176.
Spires, Jenny: The Syd Barrett Archives, Facebook, 2012.
Thorgerson, Storm: Mind Over Matter, Sanctuary Publishing, London, 2003, p. 80.
Thorgerson, Storm: Walk Away René, Paper Tiger, Limpsfield, 1989, p. 150.
Thorgerson, Storm & Powell, Aubrey: For The Love Of Vinyl, Picturebox, Brooklyn, 2008, p. 104 (essay written by Nick Mason).
Watkinson, Mike & Anderson, Pete: Crazy Diamond, Omnibus Press, London, 1993, p. 90-91.
Willis, Tim, Madcap, Short Books, London, 2002, p. 113-114.

Is there really a Barrett revival going on, or are we just seeing more Syd fans because our global village is getting smaller and smaller? I do remember the early seventies when the only guy you could speak to about Barrett was a freakish weirdo who smoked pot in the school toilets and who was generally avoided by everyone, including the school teachers.

The vibrant Birdie Hop Facebook group is sky-rocketing with over 1200 members and a dozen new threads a day, but the traditional forum has come to a standstill and survives on its three posters a day, so the feeling is a bit ambiguous.

Facebook may be here to stay (but that was once said from MySpace as well, remember?) but basically it sucks if you want to find information and you are not employed by the NSA. While traditional forums have this newbie rule to go looking in the archives before asking a question this is virtually impossible on Facebook, because their search system simply doesn't work and links are automatically made redundant after a certain time. The whole 'group' concept of Facebook is a laugh, especially for administrators. Underneath is a screenshot of an actual search on Facebook, trying to locate the thread (Facebook link no longer active) this article is about...

So, by design, Facebook groups are condemned to have a flow of 'continuous repetition' to paraphrase the wise words of Dr. Hans Keller while the one interesting thread is floating down around the icy waters underground. (Wow, this is a good cigarette.)

Waiting for the man

A couple of weeks ago Baron Wolman's picture of Pink Floyd toying around at the Casa Madrona hotel in Sausalito (CA) was posted again and as usual there was that one individual asking if anybody knew who the bloke was standing behind the boys.

As a matter of fact nobody remembers, not even Nick Mason, who writes in the coffee-table edition of Inside Out ^Note:

Tea on the terrace at our hotel in Sausalito on the hillside above San Fransisco Bay (…) I have no idea who our tea-time partner was – the hotel manager, an under assistant West Coast promotion man, or a vendor of Wild West apparel? We eventually acquired enough cowboy hats for the entire population of Dodge City, and Roger commissioned a six-gun holster in which he carried his wallet.

So here was another quest for the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, that splendid non-profit organisation, lead by that fantabulous mastermind Reverend Felix Atagong who has already solved several Barrettian riddles in the past.

Hotel California

The obvious first step was to contact the hotel that doesn't hesitate to put on its website that it is a legend since 1885 and that it drew celebrities such as Dick Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, Warren Beatty and the rock band Pink Floyd.

We got a very friendly answer from Stefan Mühle, the general manager, that our guess was logical but that he didn't know either. Since 1967 the hotel changed hands a couple of times and the finer side of these anecdotes, that only seem to bother the Sydiots in the world, got lost in the mist of times.

Before we continue with our quest, let's have a small history lesson.

In the summer of 1967 Syd Barrett suffered from something that was euphemistically referred to as over-fatigue. The band scrapped some gigs and send Barrett over to sunny Formentera under supervision of doctor Sam Hutt, the underground's leading gynaecologist. Unfortunately Smutty, as he was invariably called by his female patients, was the kind of doctor who rather prescribed LSD than aspirin. After some holidays in the sun Syd (and the rest of the boys) returned to England where the endless treadmill of gigging, recording, gigging, recording started all over again. (You can read more about the Floyd's holiday at Formentera Lady.)

In retrospect this was the moment that someone should've grabbed Syd by the balls, whether he wanted it or not, drag him back to Cambridge, cold turkey him and give him some proper therapy, although that was kind of non-existent in those days. William Pryor, a Cambridge beat poet who descended from the underground into a heroine maelström, describes the Cane Hill drug rehabilitation centre as a 'redecorated ward of a huge Victorian lunatic asylum village that had been given a coat of paint and a fancy name' where it was almost easier to score H than in the outside world.

This is not America

Pink Floyd's first American tour was planned between 23 October and 12 November 1967 but because there was a rather Kafkaesque bureaucratic system to get work permits up till 15 possible gigs had to be cancelled (according to Julian Palacios 8 had already been booked, Mark Blake sticks to 6 and Syd Barrett Pink Floyd dot com counts 10).

The trustworthy biographies all have (slightly) different stories but it is safe to say that the Floyd left for America with at least a week delay. Unfortunately they still couldn't enter the country and had to wait in Canada until their permits arrived while the management frantically tried to reschedule the gigs that had already been confirmed.

Pink Floyd had been nicknamed 'The Light Kings of England' by Tower Records, but they had only played in small clubs up till now. When the Floyd had their first gig at San Francisco’s Winterland Auditorium on the 4th of November their light show was ridiculously small and amateurish compared to Big Brother and The Holding Company. But it was not only Janis Joplin's whiskey breath that blew Syd away.

The 1967 American tour was disastrous, to say the least, and quite a few gigs went horribly wrong. Luckily the natives were friendly, so friendly that at least one band member had to visit a venereal disease clinic back in the UK. Syd and Peter Wynne-Willson learned the hard way that American grass was much stronger than at home, leading to another ruined gig as Syd was apparently too stoned to handle his guitar. It is an educated guess that Syd tried some local drug varieties like DMT and STP that were much stronger than their British counterparts. DOM or STP or Serenity, Tranquility and Peace allegedly gave synaesthetic trips that could last for 18 hours and from testimonies by Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton and Mick Farren it is known that it could take a week for some (frightening) hallucinatory effects to disappear. Julian Palacios, who dedicates 11 pages to the Floyd's first American tour in Dark Globe, writes:

Associated with the downfall of Haight-Ashbury, on 11 November pink wedge-shaped pills containing 20-micrograms of DOM hit the Haight. Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic treated eighteen cases of acute toxic psychosis in five hours. When Barrett and Wynne-Willson took STP in San Francisco, this was in all likelihood the same ‘pink wedge’.

Result: if Syd Barrett had been mad before, this tour only made him madder. At the Cheetah club he received an electroshock from his microphone and he reacted by looking around on stage for the next hour and a half, not singing, not playing his guitar. He would be incommunicado to the others for the rest of the tour, who weren't very keen to talk to him anyway. It needs to be said that not all gigs were catastrophic and some reviewers actually found the band interesting, but we wouldn't go that far by calling Syd's erratic behaviour a cleverly performed dadaist statement like Rob Chapman suggests.

On the cover of the Rolling Stone

A brand new music magazine, called Rolling Stone, whose first issue had just appeared a couple of days before, wanted to do a feature on the new English underground sensation. They send over photographer Baron Wolman to the Casa Madrona hotel in Sausalito who found the lads in a good mood and joking around. But when the band performed at Winterland that night, the 11th of November, Ralph Gleason of Rolling Stone was so disappointed he decided not to publish the cover article and just reviewed the concert saying that 'Pink Floyd for all its electronic interest is simply dull in a dance hall'. This was also the gig where Syd detuned the strings of his guitar until they fell off, de facto ending his contribution for the rest of the show. The next day, on the last gig of the American tour, the band saw Syd walking off stage and for the first time voices were raised to kick him out.

In retrospect this was another moment that someone should've grabbed Syd by the balls, whether he wanted it or not, and drag him back to Cambridge, but the management insisted to immediately fly to Holland. Thirty-seven years later, Nick Mason more or less apologises:

If proof was needed that we were in denial about Syd's state of mind, this was it. Why we thought a transatlantic flight immediately followed by yet more dates would help is beyond believe.

This is the house

Casa Madrona was build in February 1885 for (isn't it ironic?) William G. Barrett, a wealthy Vermont born lumber baron and Secretary-Treasurer for the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company. He and his family lived high above the town in his beautifully designed Italian Villa country home.

Architecturally, it was a mastery of craftmanship, a tall and stately mansion which stood upon the hill-side. Its three stories, with handsome porticos and verandas, projecting cornice with curved brackets, and hooded windows, received prominent recognition from the community. This resulted in an article in the Sausalito News in 1885, which praised Mr. Barrett's "New Mansion... its fine appearance, magnificent view", and called the Barrett place "one of the finest improved sites in Sausalito." (Taken from the National Register of Historic Places.)

In 1906 the house was sold to attorney John Patrick Gallagher who converted it into a successful hotel. For the next three decades Barrett House (and its four outbuildings) would be a hotel, a bar 'the Gallagher Inn' and a brothel, but that last is something you won't find at the hotel's website.

During World War II, the property was used as temporary lodging for military families in transit and for the labourers of the nearby (military) shipyard. After the war it fell into disrepair and became known as a crash pad for the city’s burgeoning beatnik population.

In February 1959 Robert and Marie-Louise Deschamps, who had just immigrated from France, responded to an ad to run a 'small hotel'. Their children Marie-France and 24-year old Jean-Marie were there when they opened a nameless bar on the 27th of April 1959:

The building was in ruins. Mattresses on the floor, broken furniture - and very little of that. It was not ‘bohemian’ - it was a flop house!

The Deschamps family had no hotel experience and were rather unpleasantly surprised by the beatniks who rarely paid their bills. The bar was not an immediate success either, they would often find that the door had been smashed in at night and the beer stolen. The logical plan was to close the hotel, evict the hobos and start all over again.

When the renewed hotel, in exclusive French style, and an excellent restaurant 'Le Vivoir' were opened about a year later Jean-Marie left the parental home to sail the seven seas, working as a cook on Norwegian and Swedish ships. He returned to the hotel around the mid-sixties and moved into Cottage B. Several guests, from the pre-sixties bohemian days, were still living in the 'attached' cottages, including a Swedish baron who had served in the Waffen SS, an ex-CIA agent who claimed to have been a spy in Vienna, a mostly drunk beatnik writer and adventurer and, last but not least, a continuously depressed crew member of one of the planes that dropped the atom bomb on Japan.

In 1973 Casa Madrona was damaged by a series of mudslides and scheduled for demolition, but it was saved in 1976. Since then it changed owner several times and went even bankrupt in 2009. With the opening of a spa resort the hotel was, hopefully, given a new life and history.

Jean-Marie Deschamps

It is believed that Jean-Marie Deschamps, the owner's son, was living and working at the hotel when the Pink Floyd stayed there in November 1967, 2 months before his 32nd birthday. We contacted Baron Wolman who told us:

While I'm not entirely certain that he was Deschamps himself, for sure he was a principal in the hotel - owner, manager, chef, etc. Given the look, however, I would say your educated guess is probably correct...

Comparing the Floydian picture (1967) with one from 2005 it seems pretty safe to say there is a certain resemblance.
Update January 2014: The Deschamps family have confirmed it is Jean-Marie standing behind Pink Floyd.

Jean was born on January 20, 1936 and passed away on Tuesday, December 8, 2009. In a (French) obituary it is written how Jean-Marie was an 'incorrigible globe-trotting vagabond' whose home was always 'elsewhere' and an anarchistic supporter of lost causes, like the rights of native Americans. Later on, despising the Bush administration, he was an ardent critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

But once a cook, always a cook. The night before he died he asked his (fourth) wife Monica to note down the Christmas menu for his children and grandchildren, probably knowing that he wouldn't be there to attend. January 2010 saw a 'sumptuous feast' at the Barrel Room of the Sebastiani Winery in Sanoma (CA) where 150 guests honoured their friend, husband, father, grandfather. The place was a gathering of artists, writers, businessmen, hosts, globetrotters and vagabonds.

If only someone would have had the guts to find out earlier who was the man standing behind the band. It would've been swell to ask him about his meeting with the Floyd in 1967, but unfortunately now it is too late for that. We are pretty sure that it would have led to a tsunami of anecdotes as Jean-Marie Deschamps had always been a sailor and a vagabond at heart.

And we will never know what Syd thought of staying in Barrett House.

An Ending In Style (or not)

We need an addendum as the Pink Floyd in Sausalito saga isn't over yet.

When Pink Floyd roadie Alan Styles, who used to be a punter on the river Cam, saw the house boats community in Sausalito he fell in love with the place and decided not to return home after the 1972-1973 Dark Side of the Moon tour. Alan, who was some kind of celebrity in Cambridge before anyone had heard of Pink Floyd, can be seen on the rear cover of the Ummagumma album and makes out the bulk of the 'musique concrète' on Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast (Atom Heart Mother).

In 2000 a short movie was made about Style's life in Sausalito, but it was only released after his death in 2011. It is the story of a man wanting to be free in a world that keeps on abolishing freedom. In a nice gesture to their old friend Pink Floyd Ltd cleared the copyrights for the movie, as told by Viper:

Nick Mason messaged me on FB as I'd been asking on his site about permission to release the video about my uncle. Nick gave me PF's management details and in turn David Gilmour gave us permission to release the video as it contains original PF music.

But when the Reverend visited Jon Felix's YouTube channel this is all he got, apparently EMI (and a lot of other acronyms) don't give a fuck about what Nick Mason or David Gilmour are deciding or what friendship, compassion, remembrance and especially respect is all about:

In some kind of weird Floydian cosmic joke Alan Styles died on the same day as Jean-Marie Deschamps, but two years later, on the 8th of December 2011.

Somewhere we think we should try to make a point, but we can't think of anything right now.

Note: The memoires of Nick Mason's Inside Out are (90%) identical between the different editions. However, the hardcover 'deluxe' edition contains hundreds of photos that aren't in the cheaper soft-cover versions. These pictures all have funny and informative notes that aren't present in the paperback editions. Back to top.

Many thanks to: the Deschamps family, Jon Felix, Yves Leclerc, Stefan Mühle (Casa Madrona Hotel & Spa), Viper, Baron Wolman, USA National Register off Historic Places.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 95-96.
Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 198.
Leclerc, Yves: Bum Chromé, Blogspot, 9 décembre 2009, 10 janvier 2010.
Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004, p. 93.
Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 98-102.
Mühle, Stefan: JM Deschamps on Baron Wolman picture?, email, 21.10.2013.
Palacios, Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p. 289-290, 298.
Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008, p. 45-46, 69.
Pryor, William: The Survival Of The Coolest, Clear Books, 2003, p. 106.
Wolman, Baron: Casa Madrona - Pink Floyd + unknown man, email, 14.10.2013.

Baron Wolman
Baron Wolman Photography
The Rolling Stone Years by Baron Wolman

Casa Madrona & Sausalito
Casa Madrona Hotel & Spa
Casa Madrona AKA William G. Barrett House @ National Register of Historic Places in Marin County.
Casa Madrona @ United States Department of the Interior Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, National Register of Historic Places.
Casa Madrona, 1959 @ Marinscope, an interview with Jean-Marie Deschamps.
Colorful Casa Madrona Tales Keep Spilling Out @ Northbay Biz

Solo En Las Nubes
Curiosidades - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn de Tower Records, an interesting post about the Tower release of Pink Floyd's first album.

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.

It was probably Monday the 28th of March 1994 when the Reverend came home from work and had a burning hot CD in his pocket. On the train from work to Atagong mansion he had already opened the booklet, had thoroughly scrutinised the artwork by Storm Thorgerson, trying to read the music in the intriguing images. Cerro Tololo, the boxing gloves, the paper heads (and headlines)... The Reverend's heart literally skipped a beat when he found out that Rick Wright had been given a song he could call his own. Rick's first Pink Floyd song for nearly two decades (and literally the centrepiece of the album).

Probably the Atagong family had supper first, then LA-girl sat in the couch, and after the Reverend had put the CD in the player he sat next to her. It must have been a rather chilly day because there was some wood burning in the stove and Mimi, the fat and pregnant cat, was enjoying the heat in her basket.

The earth noises came in... and a new legend was born...

All this came back to the Reverend when, on the 19th of May 2014 a new Pink Floyd website appeared, called Division Bell 20.

Chernobyl Blues

There was a countdown clock and a new - Storm Thorgerson inspired - video for the excellent Marooned instrumental, that grew out of a jam at the Astoria recording studio between David Gilmour & Rick Wright. There were immediately some rumours in Pink Floyd internet land, some clearly more inspired than others, but the general consensus was that the album would be re-released in an anniversary or even an Immersion edition.

The obvious nod towards Thorgerson and Wright made the fans hope for the release of The Big Spliff, a Division Bell satellite album whose demos had been lying in the vaults since 1994. Nick Mason in Inside Out:

After two weeks we had taped an extraordinary collection of riffs, patterns and musical doodles, some rather similar, some nearly identifiable as old songs of ours, some clearly subliminal reinventions of well known songs. (…) But even having discarded these, forty ideas were available. (…) We eventually ended up with enough left-over material that we considered releasing it as a second album, including a set we dubbed ‘The Big Spliff’, the kind of ambient mood music that we were bemused to find being adopted by bands like the Orb, although – unlike Gong’s Steve Hillage – we never received any invitations to join this next generation on stage.

It needs to be said that the Reverend's expectations were running in overdrive as well, he was hoping for a new Publius Enigma clue (or perhaps a modest explanation of the riddle - stroke - hoax), hidden in the artwork somewhere, and of course the anticipation of some unreleased tracks, as on the other Immersion and Discovery sets (see also: Fuck all that, Pink Floyd Ltd).

Four Star Daydream

When the clock reached zero the website indeed revealed a pricey Division Bell box-set (actually it crashed at first, as it was hit by thousands of fans at the same time). Limited at 500 copies worldwide it contained an exclusive Limited Edition Division Bell 20th Anniversary T-shirt, a remastered double vinyl in gatefold sleeve, a Division Bell CD and a Bluray with 3 alternative mixes and the new Marooned music video. Some 7 and 12 inch coloured vinyl singles were thrown in as well, together with a 24 Page 12" (30 cm) booklet, 4 art prints and... some toasters.

So basically Pink Floyd decided to ride the gravy train (again) by repackaging the same product five times in the same box and throwing it at the fans for the giveaway price of £157.50 (about 263 $ or 193 Euro, the unlimited box [without t-shirt and coasters] comes somewhat cheaper and is still available).

Each man has his price, Fred

The fact that it is Gilmour now who spits the fans in the face even made it into the papers and generally there is much disdain from the fanbase. What seemed to be the hype of the year was nothing but a cheap stunt to sell some recycled material at exorbitant prices. That the memory of Rick Wright and the legacy of Storm Thorgerson were thrown in to make a cynical million bucks more makes this release even more nauseating. Polly Samson once wrote: “David Gilmour should be cloned so that every crowded house might have one”, but at this rate she can keep him inside, lock the door and throw away the key.

Did you understand the music, Dave, or was it all in vain?

And when you feel you're near the end
And what once burned so bright is growing dim?
And when you see what's been achieved
Is there a feeling that you've been deceived?
Near The End - David Gilmour, 1984.

Upgrade 2014: a month after the publication of this article it was found out that a brand new 'recycled' Pink Floyd album was in the make, loosely based upon the Big Spliff sessions. However, this resulted in an unprecedented attack of the Floyd management towards its fans. Read: The loathful Mr. Loasby and other stories...  

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

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 315-316.
Samson, Polly: Perfect Lives, Virago Press, London, 2010, p. 225.

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.

(This is part two of our The Endless River series, for the bawdy introduction, go here: What the fuck is your problem, Pink Floyd?)

So here it is. The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's The Endless River review of what undoubtedly is the most anticipated record of the year.

Read

The album has four, mostly instrumental, suites, that Pink Floyd prefers to call sides. Each suite has several tracks, but these are best listened to in one piece as they form one ensemble. The 'luxe' edition has a 39 minutes extra DVD or Blu-ray with 6 videos of 1993 studio rehearsals and 3 audio tracks. The Blu-ray version is the most complete (and expensive) as it also has a stereo PCM, a 5.1 DTS and a 5.1 PCM version of the album, whatever these acronyms mean.

The front cover concept was designed by Ahmed Emad Eldin, in what could be called ersatz Hipgnosis style, probably chosen because it evokes the boatman who was present in The Division Bell artwork (and, in lesser extent, on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason). The other artwork is credited to the usual gang of graphic designers: Aubrey Powell, Stylorouge, StormStudios and, weirdly, Hipgnosis, although that company stopped in 1983. The 24-pages booklet has a maritime feel: compasses, maps, logbooks... The lettering misses a piece in most letters, to accentuate the missing keyboard player, who has been credited on 11 of the 18 tracks. Storm Thorgerson is remembered as well in the credits.

Think

The album was created out of rejected 1993 jams and demos, with Richard Wright, Nick Mason and David Gilmour, that were probably revisited to be added to a Division Bell anniversary set of one kind or another. Rejected is too strong a word because way back, twenty years ago, it had been the idea to turn the The Division Bell into a double CD-set, what was abandoned for lack of time. That second album turned into the apocryphal The Big Spliff that still sits in Gilmour's studio in an unfinished form and that was assembled by Andy Jackson. Phil Manzanera was asked, in 2012, to work on it, but refused.

I don't wanna hear. I wanna hear every single piece or scrap that was recorded, everything. Outtakes from Division Bell. Everything.

In December 2012 Manzanera puzzled dozens of unfinished pieces into a skeleton, divided into four 12 minute suites, out of 20 hours of material. According to Manzanera, Pink Floyd thanked him and immediately put the work in a box where they forgot it. Martin 'Youth' Glover however says that he was invited in June 2013 and that David Gilmour had already worked on the two different versions of the project.

Within about 40 seconds, it sounded like Floyd. It was absolutely magical. (…) Listening to unreleased Pink Floyd recordings with David, the hair was going up on the back of my arms.

Youth then created a third version and in November 2013 a meeting was held between the two remaining Pink Floyd members and the three producers: Andy Jackson, Phil Manzanera and Youth. Gilmour and Mason picked the best ideas from each version and started working on something that could have been an atrocious Frankenmix but that turned out quite coherent in the end.

Listen

Side One: ambient spaces

"Things Left Unsaid...", Gilmour, Wright
"It's What We Do", Gilmour, Wright
"Ebb and Flow", Gilmour, Wright

Things Left Unsaid (4:27): a very ambient, Cluster One atmospheric, introduction, with some voice samples of the Floyd members. Tradition wants that it only starts morphing into something of a melody after the two minutes mark. It gradually slides into It's What We Do (6:17) that thrives on a Shine On You Crazy Diamond moog synth and traces of Marooned later on. This is a typical Floydian spacey slow blues, ideal for those fans who want to chill out with a big spliff. It's lazy and slow and probably a bit boring for some, a typical trademark of the Floyd sound, and just because it is so intriguingly and deliberately slow, the first thrill of the album. It continues into Ebb and Flow (1:55), mainly an epilogue to the previous track.

Actually the first suite is pretty daring to start with in the hectic days we are living in today, this is so contradictory with contemporary music it nearly feels alienated. It's the kind of suite that will be used in nuru massage parlours around the world.

Side Two: early days tripper

"Sum", Gilmour, Mason, Wright
"Skins", Gilmour, Mason, Wright
"Unsung", Wright
"Anisina", Gilmour

Sum (4:48), there's that Cluster One intro again with ambient effects switching towards an Astronomy Domine space trip. Then it nods to an early seventies style Floydian jam, One Of These Days, although bigger and louder, including that good old perverted VCS3 machine.

Skins (2:37) further elaborates on the A Saucerful Of Secrets tribal rhythms and this is the first time in years we hear grand vizier Nick Mason take the lead on a track, finally! We could never think we would be so happy with a fucking drum solo. Gilmour makes his guitar scream à la Barrett in Interstellar Overdrive in something that can be described as a beat bolero. The track ends with some minor guitar effects, just for the sake of the effect and glides over to Unsung (1:07), an intermezzo that is a bridge to the ending of this suite, the magical Anisina (3:17). Those who think this is Wright in a jazz lounge must be contradicted. This is 100% Gilmour and it brings shivers down the spine, even if this a known track that has been bootlegged before as a Division Bell outtake.

The second suite is the experimental one, although the experiment is limited not to scare the casual listener away. We've heard people say that this Pink Floyd record is more of the same. And it's true. But who complains when The Rolling Stones or U2 bring out their umpteenth album sounding exactly like the previous one?

Side Three: all that jazz

"The Lost Art of Conversation", Wright
"On Noodle Street", Gilmour, Wright
"Night Light", Gilmour, Wright
"Allons-Y (1)", Gilmour
"Autumn '68", Wright
"Allons-Y (2)", Gilmour
"Talkin' Hawkin'", Gilmour, Wright

The lost art of conversation (1:43) is an introductory piano piece by Wright, obviously with some guitar effects from Gilmour. It segues into On Noodle Street (1:42), that is, as the title gives away, nothing but a light jazzy noodling, featuring Guy Pratt, Wright's son-in-law. It is easy listening for Floydheads, just like the next track Night Light (1:42). The first three tracks are merely the introduction for the highlight of this side, and perhaps the album.

Allons-Y (1) (1:57), is a two-piecer and a Run Like Hell copycat, only much better (actually, we find Run Like Hell one of the worst tracks by the Floyd). It is irresistible and the moment we really started tapping our feet. The mid-piece of Allons-Y is Autumn '68 (1:35), the much discussed archival bit taken from a Wright improvisation from the Royal Albert Hall in 1968, reminding us vaguely of a movement of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, only this dates from about five years before. Allons-Y (2) (1:32) is a reprise of the first part to close the circle.

Talkin Hawkin' (3:29) starts rather like one of those slow evolving (and a bit tedious) pieces from On An Island, but is – yet again – irresistible in its meandering movements. Nobody is so immaculate in creating these lazy and slightly boring moods than Pink Floyd. With its Stephen Hawking samples this track is the obvious link to The Division Bell, but the track itself is the counterpart of Keep Talking.

The third suite is the most light-hearted one, perhaps the most commercial and catchy, and it surely is saved by, here we go, Allons-Y.

Side Four: turn off the lights

"Calling", Gilmour, Moore
"Eyes to Pearls", Gilmour
"Surfacing", Gilmour
"Louder than Words", Gilmour, Samson

Anthony Moore, who made the Broken China album with Richard Wright is responsible for Calling (3:38) and it certainly has the mood of that pretty depressed, and unfortunately underestimated, album. The atmosphere is somewhat reminiscent of David Bowie's Warszawa, it is an ambient and dark and haunting piece. It is a nice thing from Gilmour to have added this obvious nod to Rick's solo album and one of the more interesting pieces of the album.

Eyes To Pearls (1:51) breathes the air of Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks and has hidden hints of Money and One Of These Days, but one can find traces of earlier work in about all tracks on this album. Didn't Nick Mason quip once he was in the recycling business? Surfacing (2:46) acts as the intro to the final song, it seems a lesser track at first, but it has a weeping guitar that hit us right in the heart / stomach / balls. Actually most of the numbers may not be seen as individual pieces but as movements of each suite and as such they perfectly serve their roles.

Louder Than Words (6:37) was gravely discussed when it came out, it has been called Floyd by numbers and Polly Samson's lyrics are of syrupy soap series quality but in this context and as the coda of the album it just works great. Just listen to that piano intro by Wright, the last we'll probably hear, that irresistible refrain, the perfect ending solo, also the last we'll probably hear... This is Gilmour at his best and for once he doesn't stretches it too long, what was his problem on the previous Diet Floyd records where he had the habit of putting six minute guitar solos in three minute songs. Gilmour's playing on this album is to the point and you never get the feeling he is showing off like on, for instance, On An Island, although it is clear he bought a new set of pedals.

Communicate

This is a great album, a classic in the making, although perhaps only for the die-hard fans, and is far much better than we had ever hoped for.

(A third article, with a more critical approach to the album can be found at: Chin Chin.)

More reviews at A Fleeting Glimpse and Brain Damage. Illustrations (except the Rick Wright picture) taken from The Endless River and The Division Bell..
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

Sources (other than the above internet links):
Bonner, Michael: Coming back to life, Uncut, November 2014, p. 35 – 41.

The new Diet Pink Floyd album The Endless River is conquering the world, perhaps to the absence of any real competition. We don't think Susan Boyle's cover version of Wish You Were Here will pose a real threat, does it? In Holland the album, currently at number one, sells five times as much as the number two.

The Endless River is a slow evolving, ambient piece of work with obvious nods to the Floyd's glorious past... one hears traces of A Saucerful Of Secrets (Syncopated Pandemonium), Astronomy Domine, Careful With That Axe Eugene, Cluster One, Interstellar Overdrive, Keep Talking, Marooned, Money, One Of These Days (I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces), Run Like Hell, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and probably half a dozen more we've already forgotten.

The familiarity of it all has created raving enthusiasm for some and 'mainly yesterday's reheated lunch' for others and this also seems to be the opinion of the press. Mark Blake (in Mojo) politely describes the album as 'big on atmosphere, light on songs', Mikael Wood (in the Los Angeles Times) states that Pink Floyd drifts towards nothingness with aimless and excruciatingly dull fragments.

While the 1987 A Momentary Lapse Of Reason album was a David Gilmour solo effort, recorded with 18 session musicians and with the Pink Floyd name on the cover to sell a few million copies more, The Endless River originally grew out of jams between Gilmour, Mason & Wright.

Actually these were rejected jams, not good enough to include on The Division Bell, but over the years they seem to have ripened like good old wine. Well that's the PR story but in reality Andy Jackson, Phil Manzanera and Martin 'Youth' Glover had to copy bits and pieces from twenty hours of tape and toy around with every single good sounding second in Pro Tools to obtain something relatively close to Floydian eargasm. Phil Manzanera in Uncut:

I would take a guitar solo from another track, change the key of it, stick it on an outtake from another track. 'Oh that bit there, it reminds me of Live At Pompeii, but let's put a beat underneath it.' So then I take a bit of Nick warming up in the studio at Olympia, say, take a bit of a fill here and a bit of fill there. Join it together, make a loop out of it.

This doesn't really sound like an organic created piece of music, does it? The result is a genetically modified fat-free sounding record and while this is the most ambient experiment of Pink Floyd it will never get extreme, despite Martin Glover's presence whose only ambient house additions seem to be the On The Run VCS3 effect that comes whooshing in several times. Youth isn't that young and reckless any more so don't expect anything close to the KLF's Madrugada Eterna, Jimmy 'Space' Cauty's Mars or the Orb's A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld, unfortunately.

Update April 2017: One and a half year after the record has been released the involvement of Nick Mason can be finally discussed as well. Pink Floyd know-all Ron Toon at Steve Hoffmann:

Nick had nothing to do with this project except to play a few new drum tracks basically being brought in as a session drummer. Of course he was / is a member of Pink Floyd but his involvement in this project was minimal at best. The vision was David's and the other producers and Andy [Jackson] did most of the work. Source: Pink Floyd - The Early Years 1965-1972 Box Set.

But the music isn't the only thing that seems to be embellished. Last week long-time Echoes mailing list member Christopher, also known as 10past10, went on holidays, taking with him the new Pink Floyd CD and, as reading material, Nick Mason's Inside Out book. Then something happened which unleashed the power of his imagination (read Christopher's original mail).

The mid-book picture of The Endless River shows the Astoria studio with Rick Wright, David Gilmour and Nick Mason jamming in 1993, taken by Jill Furmanovsky. This picture has been stitched out of several shots, the borders don't match (deliberately) and Nick Mason (or at least his arms) can be seen twice.

But Christopher was in for another surprise when he looked at the fourth picture gallery in Nick Mason's Inside Out soft-cover (or on page 313 if you have the coffee-table edition). It shows another picture of the same session, with Rick Wright, David Gilmour and Bob Ezrin.

Now look at the man in the middle, the one who doesn't like to be called Dave. Christopher:

If you look closely at every piece of David's clothing, his hair, the way he is holding his guitar, the chords, the lot. It all matches exactly ... too much not be a match.

Not only does The Endless River centrefold superimposes Nick Mason twice, but they have glued in David Gilmour from another shot (and removed Bob Ezrin).

And still, that is not all.

Look very closely to Gilmour's face in the 1993 picture (left) and to his face on the 2014 release (right). Christopher explains:

The difference is in the original shot.
David has a double chin.
In The Endless River shot it has been dealt with.

There will be no fat on The Endless River, not on the music and certainly not on Air-Brush Dave.

(This is The Anchor's satirical review of The Endless River, or part three if you like. For the Reverend's opinion, check: While my guitar gently weeps...)

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

Many thanks to Christopher (10past10), Ron Toon. Pictures courtesy of Jill Furmanovsky.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

Sources (other than the above internet links):
10past10 (Christopher), Alcog Dave no more, mail, 2014 11 14.
Bonner, Michael: Coming back to life, Uncut, November 2014, p. 39.
Echoes mailing list: to join just click on the appropriate link on their sexy echoes subscription and format information webpage.

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.

Christopher's original posting to Echoes: (Back to article)

Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:00:32 +1000
From: 10past10
Subject: Alcog Dave no more ...
To: echoes@meddle.org

Hi Ho All,

I do believe there is photographic trickery afoot!

Exhibit A: The centrefold picture in The Endless River depicting Richard, David and Nick in the studio.

Exhibit B: Inside Out; the fourth lot of pics in the paperback or p313 in hardback (1st ed), depicting Richard, David and Bob Ezrin.

Obviously it is a different pic of Richard and Bob/Nick. But I reckon the picture of David is the same one; except for one difference.

So, I reckon, to get the wider shot for the TER CD centrefold (I don't know how it may or may not appear in the other versions as I haven't seen them yet), they have made a composite photo using the shot of David rom the one Nick originally published and shots of Richard and Nick from one or two different pictures.

If you look closely at every piece of David's clothing, his hair, the way he is holding his guitar, the chords, the lot. It all matches exactly ... too much not be a match.

Does this matter? Of course not. Why not do that to get what you need. Obviously Nick himself is double exposed when you look at his arms.

Is it worth pointing out? Yes (but just because you can, not because it will change the world). Why? Because of the one difference.

The difference is in the original shot David has a double chin. In The Endless River shot it has been dealt with.

Some time ago I was castigated for calling David, Fat Dave. So I changed that to Alcog Dave. He is that no more. In my more whimsical moods I shall hence forth refer to him as "Air-Brush Dave".

I like Pink Floyd.

Rock On
Christopher

i am remotely morty

(Back to article)

Brain Damage

At the 'Mortal Remains' Pink Floyd exhibition that is currently running in London a Polaroid can be found showing Syd Barrett at the Abbey Road studio in July 1975. This is not the picture that was magically found back when Nick Mason needed to promote his biography in 2004 and that dates from June 1975.

Here is what Nick writes about that:

It was during these sessions at Abbey Road, on 5th June, that we had one totally unexpected visitor. I strolled into the control room from the studio, and noticed a large fat bloke with a shaven head, wearing a decrepit old tan mac. He was carrying a plastic shopping bag and had a fairly benign, but vacant, expression on his face. His appearance would not have generally gained him admittance beyond studio reception, so I assumed that he must have been a friend of one of the engineers. Eventually David asked me if I knew who he was. Even then I couldn’t place him, and had to be told. It was Syd. More than twenty years later I can still remember that rush of confusion.

Remember a Day

Confused is what Mason is indeed, as he doesn't mention Syd's second visit to the studio, a month later, accidentally - or not? - on David Gilmour's wedding day. In a Mojo interview from 2006 David Gilmour denied that Syd was at his wedding, although he seems to recall that Barrett visited the band more than once.

From a 1982 Musician Magazine interview:

He showed up at the studio. He was very fat and he had a shaved head and shaved eyebrows and no one recognized him at all first off. There was just this strange person walking around the studio, sitting in the control room with us for hours. If anyone else told me this story, I'd find it hard to believe, that you could sit there with someone in a small room for hours, with a close friend of yours for years and years, and not recognize him. And I guarantee, no one in the band recognized him. Eventually, I had guessed it. And even knowing, you couldn't recognize him. He came two or three days and then he didn't come anymore. (Taken from: December 1982 - Musician Magazine at Brain Damage)

So, Gilmour does seem to acknowledge that Syd Barrett visited the studio more than once, only not on his wedding day.

Mark Blake in Pigs Might Fly:

On 7 July, during a break in the Wish You Were Here sessions, Gilmour married girlfriend Ginger at Epping Forest Register Office, and the Syd tale takes on another curious twist. In conversation with Mojo magazine in 2006, Gilmour disputed any stories that Syd had attended his wedding. Yet at least three of the guests claim they saw Syd at a post-wedding meal at Abbey Road. Ex-manager Andrew King recalled Barrett looking ‘like the type of bloke who serves you in a hamburger bar in Kansas City’. Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley referred to him as ‘an overweight Hare Krishna-type chap’.

Young Lust

One who does remember - obviously, as it was her wedding day - is Ginger Gilmour in her autobiography Bright Side Of The Moon:

While clearing his throat, the registrar leaned over towards David and said, "Excuse me, Sir, the ring?" We both looked at each other with a look of...OH NO. I had waited all my life for this moment and we had forgotten to get a ring! Linnie came up to us from behind and offered for us to use a ring she had gotten from a box of Crackerjacks. An American sweet popcorn, which always had a surprise gift inside and she had just happened to eat on the way. God was on our side, even if we didn't realize it. David eventually had a ring designed in white gold with two interlocking hearts by a friend who was a designer of jewelry.
The registrar did turn a few shades of red at the thought but proceeded. When the words, "You may put the ring on her finger" was said, neither of us knew which finger or which hand David should put it on. Once my embarrassment settled, I remembered that it was the fourth finger but not which hand. Boy, were we well rehearsed. I had both fourth fingers up. We both teetered between them as we tried to get it right and hold our pride intack. Linnie said in a low whisper trying to say it just low enough for us to hear, "The right one, the right one." David looked relieved and chose the right. Phew, at last we heard the words, "You may kiss the bride." We all went on to celebrate at our local pub with a giggle and good cheer. What a tale, it has made a sweet story ever since and brought smiles to my kids' faces many years later.
David had to go to Abbey Road to continue recording Wish You Were Here. I went with him so that we could share the day together. The band had no idea until we walked in. There always seem to be stories within stories in our life. You will see why as you read further. Just to add to the day's event, when we arrived, Roger walked up to David pulling him aside and whispered to him, "Look who is sitting on the sofa." They both went slowly over to the place Roger was referring, Nick and Rick following discreetly.
There is a huge sofa in front of the mixing desk in that EMI recording room. I don't think any of them were completely certain who was sitting there until David confirmed it. David looked and his face clouded over with the reality of what he saw. Under his breath, he said, "It's Sid." The atmosphere in the room went silent as they digested the moment. Roger, especially, who is quoted to have had many mixed emotions for the past came flooding back.
There was Sid pear shape, hairless and overweight. They stood silently in disbelief. Old memories rushed into their hearts. What happened? His timing was uncanny! Their lost love and the tragedy of Sid inspired the creation of "Shine On". And there they were in the middle of recording it when Sid appeared weather worn and without hair. They stumbled to have a conversation, inviting him to listen to a track. Sid just sat there lost, on the sofa, wondering why? What a day to ponder. What a day to Remember.
(Taken from: Memoirs of the Bright Side of the Moon, p. 103-104.)

Remember Me

For one reason or another, Pink Floyd members (and other witnesses) amalgamated the different Barrett appearances into one, quasi mythical, event. Venetta Fields hinted already in March 2004 that there were pictures of the event:

I think there were photos taken at that time... I remember telling someone that was showing me a photo. I can’t remember who? I may even have a picture. We took a lot of pictures that day. They had been at the studio for hours before we got there. I think that while we were there, Syd came into the studio. Everything stopped. We were all shocked to see him and the way he looked. (Taken from: An Interview With Venetta Fields at A Fleeting Glimpse.)

The Gold It's in the...

Another mystery is why Nick Mason, who has meticulously classified the Pink Floyd archive, only came up with this second picture now – almost by chance - when he needed to promote yet another Pink Floyd pension fund.

Previously we have written some bits and pieces about the Wish You Were Here Syd Barrett appearances. Rather than let you search for these we'll just copy and paste them here:

Wish You Were... but where exactly?

One of the greatest legends about Syd Barrett is how he showed up at the Wish You Were Here recording settings on the fifth of June 1975. A Very Irregular Head merely repeats the story as it has been told in other biographies, articles and documentaries, including Rick Wright's testimony that Barrett kept brushing his teeth with a brush that was hidden in a plastic bag. Roger Waters however claims that Barrett only took sweets out of the bag. As usual different witnesses tell different stories.

The toothbrush myth is one Chapman doesn't know how to demystify but recently Mark Blake may have found a plausible explanation.

The 'toothbrush' and 'bag of candies' may have come out of the story I heard from somebody else [Nick Sedgwick, see underneath] that was at Abbey Road that day. They claimed Syd Barrett had a bag filled with packets of Amplex. For those that don't know or remember, Amplex was a breath-freshener sweet that was popular in the 70s. This eyewitness claims that Syd Barrett was nervously stuffing Amplex sweets into his mouth... another story to add to the pile... but you can see how the story of 'breath-freshener sweets' could turn into a 'toothbrush' and/or 'a bag of candies'. (Taken from May 5, 2010 Roger Waters TV interview at Late Night.)

(Taken from The Big Barrett Conspiracy Theory, 2010)

Remembering Games

A typical Floydian example of false memory syndrome is the visit of Syd Barrett in the Abbey Road studios on the 5th of June 1975. It is a mystery to us why EMI didn't ask for entrance money that day as a complete soccer team, including the four Pink Floyd members David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Rick Wright, claim they have seen, met and spoken to Syd Barrett.

Roadie (and guitar technician) Phil Taylor remembers he had a drink in the mess with Syd and David. Storm Thorgerson has had his say about it as well. Other 'reliable' witnesses that day include (alphabetically sorted):
Venetta Fields, backing singer and member of The Blackberries
John Leckie, EMI engineer and producer (but not on Wish You Were Here)
Nick Sedgwick, friend of Roger Waters and 'official' biographer of Pink Floyd
Jerry Shirley, Humble Pie drummer and friend of David Gilmour
Carlena Williams, backing singer and member of The Blackberries

Some say that Barrett visited the studio for two or three days in a row and three people, including his former managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King, claim they spoke to Syd Barrett about a month later on David Gilmour's wedding while the bridegroom himself claims that Syd Barrett never showed up. To quote Pink Floyd biographer Mark Blake: “...not two people in Pink Floyd's world have matching stories...”, and neither do two biographies...

(Taken from The Case of the Painted Floorboards (v 2.012), 2011)

Nick Sedgwick

Nick Sedgwick agrees he never felt comfortable in the presence of Syd, who was popular, eagerly sought after and always welcome. Syd Barrett may have been cooler than cool, but at what price? The shock for the band came years later when they recorded Wish You Were Here. Nick Sedgwick was around as well:

When I joined the band for lunch one day (there) was a bald fat person dressed in loose and lace-less hushpuppies, and a pair of outsize trousers held up by a length of string. (…)
I sat for twenty minutes or so, eating lunch, exchanging random news, acutely aware of the alarming presence at the head of the table that somehow seemed to dominate the proceedings. Despite the large number of people – the Floyd, engineers, EMI employees, personal assistants – these were noticeably stilted. I avoided eye contact, examined food and ashtrays during lulls in conversation. Next to me, Roger, no doubt wondering how long it would take me 'to get it', seemed increasingly amused by my discomposure. A few more minutes of strained joviality passed, then Roger nudged me gently. “Have you copped Syd yet?” he said. My head snapped up, and I swivelled open-mouthed in Syd's direction, instantly processing the message in a visceral shock of recognition. (…)
The hair was gone – from his head, from his arms, and even from his eyebrows – and, if he stood erect he would not have been able to view his feet without tilting his head forward over his belly. Only his eyes were familiar. (…)
Syd drank orange juice almost by the bucket, chewed Amplex tablets, and observed the action. I asked him what he thought of the music. There was a prolonged pause, then he answered. “It's all… all a bit Mary Poppins.” P24-26.

Nick Sedgwick does not agree with the blind adoration some fans have for Syd Barrett and calls it absurd and morbid. Syd disappeared too soon and his work, even the one with Pink Floyd, is too fragmented to speak about an oeuvre. The legend of Syd is not about him being a genius, the legend is about Barrett disappearing from the spotlights before he could become a genius. It's the James Dean syndrome and the fact that Syd Barrett didn't die but just went crazy only adds up to the legend. You can't deny Sedgwick feels somebody should have tried helping Syd (and all those others) before it was too late.

(Taken from: Roger is always right, 2018)

Aubrey 'Po' Powell

In a 2015 interview - for Floydian Slip - Aubrey Powell tells the story how Syd Barrett entered the Hipgnosis studio, asking what the others were up to. Po answered that the band were at Abbey Road, recording a new album. And that is how Syd knew where to go to to pay them a visit.

Update June 2022: This anecdote is also told in Aubrey Powell's autobiographical Hipgnosis book Through The Prism.

Taken from our review at: Cows, Pigs, Sheep... 

One day, it must have been the 5th of June 1975, an almost unrecognisable Syd Barrett enters the office, asking where the band is. Richard Evans, of the Hipgnosis crew, replies that they are probably at Abbey Road. Po accompanies Syd to the street where he walks to Soho, ‘a confused and forlorn figure’.

Check extra big pictures and other assorted trivia at our 'IggyInuit' Tumblr page: 1975.

Many thanks to: Marc-Olivier Becks, Johan Frankelius, Antonio Jesús, Göran Nystrom.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 231-232.
Gilmour, Ginger: Memoirs of the Bright Side of the Moon, Angelscript International, 2015, p. 103-104.
Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 207.

I'm a bit late with my review of Ginger Gilmour's Memoirs of the Bright Side of the Moon (2015), but I do have my reasons, or – at least - so I think. The big Pink Floyd websites ignored the book as they are only allowed to bark when Paul Loasby, who is David Gilmour's leprechaun, allows them to and on top of that The Holy Church does need to maintain its contrarious reputation.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit and do not necessarily reflect the policy of Pink Floyd, nor its members, nor any of their (ex-)wives.

1

The luxurious hardcover book is thick and heavy, printed on glossy paper, with over a hundred pictures and taking it with me on my daily commute would only gradually destroy it as it would mingle with my Nutella sandwiches and my weird obsession for Belgian pickles.

2

So I placed it in my special books section at home and promptly forgot about it for a couple of years. I am more or less a dozen of Pink Floyd related books behind and that list only gets bigger and bigger. One of the oldest books I have never read is Barry Miles' Pink Floyd: The Early Years (2006 already!) and I am still collecting courage to dig into the 2017 deluxe version of his In The Sixties autobiography that I received last year. I never made it past 1970 in Glenn Povey's Echoes (2007), that I mainly use as a reference work (and I never bought its 2015 enhanced and updated successor The Complete Pink Floyd: The Ultimate Reference). I have purchased Charles Beterams' Pink Floyd in Nederland (2017), but I hardly opened its predecessor Pink Floyd in de Polder (2007). Same thing for the Their Mortal Remains (2017) catalogue, although from the few pages I did read it appears to be a semi-pretentious bag of dubious quality and quite error prone. Nick Sedgwick's In The Pink (2017), scrupulously sought for but never consulted, and don’t get me started on my Hipgnosis / Storm Thorgerson coffee table books collection, but these all seem to overlap anyway.

Free

But back to Ginger Gilmour's memoirs. Besides the fact that it is thick and heavy, its cover is in bright pink and I didn’t want people to think I was reading a Barbie Dream Castle novel on the train. A pink cover and a pretty positive title, surely this must be a book with a message.

First of all, these are Ginger's memoirs and although there is a lot of David Gilmour inside, especially around the tumultuous The Wall / A Momentary Lapse Of Reason years, Pink Floyd isn't its primordial subject, certainly not in the later chapters when – SPOILER ALERT – their marriage has failed. Over the years Ginger has grown spiritually and artistically and this book minutiously reveals the path she walked / crawled / stumbled to get over there.

The main trouble is, for grumpy diabetics in a mid-life crisis such as me, that sucrose is dripping from nearly every page and that Ginger uses the word Beauty (with capital B) in about every other paragraph. Angels magically appear in Space Invaders droves. There is a lot of talk about Inspiration. And Meditation. Wonder. Goodness. Hope. Peace. LOVE. It's almost cuteness overload.

Four

Ginger has found inner peace by soaking in a bath of alternative, new-age, eastern-style religious and philosophical mindsets and isn't afraid of saying so. It's just not my cup of tea and it must have been hard on the frail internal Floydian communication lines as well, as has been hinted by Mark Blake. When Animals appeared there wasn't only a cold war between the Pink Floyd members going on, but also between their wives...

Ginger also found herself clashing with Waters’ new girlfriend, Carolyne Christie. Both came from wildly different backgrounds and, as one associate from the time recalls, ‘they did not see eye to eye'.

Ginger would throw a tantrum, rightly so if you ask me, over promoters who found it funny to add pigpens – with real pigs - at Pink Floyd backstage parties. She wouldn't rest until the animals had been set free. In one hilarious case the freed pig destroyed a hotel room by shitting all over the place.

I can imagine the sneers from vitriolic Roger Waters towards David Gilmour, on tour and in the studio, about 'hippie chick' Ginger. The fact that David used to sneak out of the studio for steak sandwiches and hamburgers, something his vegan wife didn't really appreciate, must have made Gilmour an easy target for Roger Waters.

The book has 90 chapters, counts over 630 pages and Floydian content can be found in about the first two thirds. These titbits relish a Floydian anorak as they give an inside look on life on the road and in the studio. Like silly crew contests, for instance:

Chris Adamson won because he ate the most amount of raw potatoes and Little Mick won for eating the most amount of fried eggs. P43

Pork Chops

Most of the time Ginger recounts about her own life, with its big and little adventures and anecdotes, like getting married without the rest of the band knowing it and meeting a memory from the past in the studio later that day (something David Gilmour always denied it happened). But that story of what happened on the 7th of July 1975 has already been told here before: Shady Diamond.

Sound of Silence

David Gilmour never was an extrovert person and if there were problems in the band, he tried to hide those for his wife.

I was not always aware of the tensions growing in the band. Moreover, just how much of that tension subtly influenced our relationship. David held most of these matters to himself. P99

But of course not everything could be kept a secret. Ginger did see the signs that something was wrong when Roger Waters isolated himself from the rest of the band during the shoddy Animals tour, where at one point Rick Wright flew back home because he couldn't stand the bass player any more.

This could have been the end of Pink Floyd but unfortunately the Norton Warburg financial debacle meant that they had to produce a smash album to recoup their financial losses. Despite the animosity in the band the three others agreed to give Waters free reign. On holiday in Lindos, Gilmour listened for days to The Wall tapes. His reaction was not immediately positive:

I don't think I can really work with this. I have no idea how this could become something people would enjoy listening to. It is just Angst! P200

One of my Turns

As we all know The Wall did turn into a massive success, but creating it was a burden for all those involved. Roger turned into something of a dictator and started to harass the others. Ginger Gilmour witnessed a few of these exchanges.

What also made it difficult was the fact that he [Rick Wright, FA] was often the punching bag. The camaraderie of the band's relationship was always boy tease boy, but for me this was getting to be too cruel. Rick buckled. It was heartbreaking to watch. P217

Ginger stays vague about David Gilmour's apparent compliance with Roger Waters. The guitarist might even have suggested to Roger to throw Nick Mason out of the band and to continue as a duo. This was told by Roger Waters in one of his angry post-Pink-Floyd interviews and denied by Gilmour.

Anyway, creating The Wall was a continuous fight between the two main protagonists, with Mason diplomatically acting as the 'ship's cook':

I see various commanders come and go, and, when things get really bad, I just go back down to the galley.

Comfortably Numb

Ginger Gilmour describes the atmosphere during the sessions as follows:

I watched David's quiet and sometimes not so quit influences bringing music to us that spoke of hope, outside the lyrics. I saw his struggle. He tried so hard. I watched Rick's withdrawal give a podium for a victim within the subconscious aspects of the story. I watched Nick's struggle between friendship and finding his voice. P222

It can't be denied though that Nick and David pretty much agreed with Roger, until Waters sneered once too much...

David was in a mood when I arrived [at a Japanese restaurant, FA]. I will never forget the look of shock on everyone's face especially Roger's, with everyone's tensions riding high. Roger wanted to remove 'Comfortably Numb' from the album. It was one of the only songs, which David had a major credit for and he exploded. I think if he had known karate the table would have split in two! I will never forget the look of shock on everyone's face, especially Roger's. P232

The Wall, with Comfortably Numb included, was successful, but the problems were far from over. In 1981 a barn filled with Floyd fireworks went up in a fire, killing the farmer and several firemen in the explosion. Pink Floyd's army of lawyers reacted that it wasn't their problem and the band was later acquitted from all (financial) responsibility.

The Thin Ice

The tension in the band had its negative influence on Gilmour's marriage as well . The first cracks in the 'thin ice' started to show. David confided to Emo that he feared that the Sant Mat movement had too much influence on his wife, what Emo – himself a Charan Singh follower - duly contradicted.

A great deal of the book is about the many fantastic people Ginger has met over the years, ranging from the cook at a Greek restaurant to the great spiritual leaders of this world (all the people she mentions must run in the hundreds). David always liked to have his old Cambridge friends around, Emo and Pip and the people he played with in his pre-Floyd bands. When he hears the terrible news about Ponji he is genuinely shocked and saddened. (Read about Pip and Ponji here: We are all made of stars.)

Gilmour's behaviour changed radically when he became the new great leader of Pink Floyd, some of his old friends (and family members) claim. Polly Samson may have had a certain influence in this as well. Nowadays David hardly has contact with the old mob and it is believed the Roger-David feud is again as big as it was three decades ago. However, the Pink Floyd wars are now fought in private, between lawyers and managers, and only surface when new product sees the light of day. (See also: Supererog/Ation: skimming The Early Years.)

Run Like Hell

After The Final Cut there was the battle for the band, a conflict that was more of importance for David than saving his own marriage.

I remember the moment David further closed his heart, and rage took its place. P381

To finance the new project Nick Mason mortgaged his 1962 GTO Ferrari. David Gilmour put his houses at stake, without consulting his wife first.

We, our family security, were on the tightrope as well. (…) No wonder David grew more withdrawn from me. Our eyes stopped meeting. I kept looking. He was holding more than tension. He was holding a secret. P382

In order to make the new Floyd viable the family had to go on tax exile again. David didn't have the guts to tell his wife, so he ordered Steve O'Rourke to pass the message during an informal dinner. It made Ginger wonder if her husband would also instruct his manager to tell her if he wanted a divorce.

Visions of an Empty Bed

David Gilmour, who was already afraid that new age and eastern philosophies had too much influence on his wife, unwillingly pushed her further away as she sought guidance in the mental colour therapy of The Maitreya School of Healing and in the teachings of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiya order. Ginger Gilmour (in Mark Blake's biography):

I was getting more alternative - starting to meditate - and he was doing more cocaine and hanging out with all kinds of people.

Diet Floyd minus Waters was on a two years world tour, but dieting is not what happened backstage. Every night an alcohol and dope infested inferno was launched with emperor David Gilmour approvingly joining in the caligulesque festivities. On the few free days he was back in Britain, he didn't bother to show up at home, not even to greet the children.

Young Lust

Ginger Gilmour is very discrete about David's party life, but she doesn't withhold the one conversation she overheard backstage at a London show:

“Wow, I wouldn't mind getting into Gilmour's pants!”
The other woman, whose voice I recognised, said,
“No problem. I will introduce you. Get it on!” P503

This was the story of The Wall all over again, now with David 'Fred' Gilmour and Ginger as the couple in trouble.

We, David and I, were living in separate houses, separate lives joined only by our children and a piece of paper affirming, “until death do us part'. P481-482

House of Broken Dreams

In summer 1998 they went to Hawaii for a last time together, trying to act like a family but sleeping in different beds. A bitter Gilmour had the habit of answering the phone with the sentence 'House Of Broken Dreams'. This line was picked up by Graham Nash who wrote a song about Ginger and David's family situation. House Of Broken Dreams would appear on the Crosby, Stills & Nash album Live It Up (1990):

Separate houses separate hearts
It's hard to face the feelings tearing us apart
And in this house of broken dreams love lies
(Listen to it on YouTube: House Of Broken Dreams.)

By then Ginger Gilmour sought and found her own way of survival by painting and sculpting. In December 1989 she co-organised a charity Christmas Carol Fantasy. She notes, in her typical spiritual mood that seeps through the text and that gets more frequent near the end:

I felt I was being guided by something greater than me, the Divine power of our Creator and his team of Angels. Miracles happened each day.

I'm not sure if angels were involved or not, but David Gilmour, who was by then living on his own on Malda Avenue, agreed to help her out for the rock'n roll section of the show. He assembled the Christmas Carol Fantasy Band that comprised of Paul Young, Vicki Brown, Jon Lord, Mick Ralphs, Rick Wills, Nick Laird-Clowes, performing Imagine and Happy Christmas (War Is Over).

Outside the Wall

The divorce did not embitter Ginger and she writes with much love about David Gilmour and Pink Floyd. She seems to be such a nice lady and her book is so filled with uplifting optimism that it almost is a sin to criticise her, but it is not without flaws.

Ginger Gilmour sees divine intervention about everywhere so that I can only deduct that over the years she created her own personal cuckoo land. This is mostly harmless, but after a time it gets slightly irritating. An example. Ginger invites Buddhist Lama Kalu Rinpoche to one of The Wall shows in Los Angeles. When he leaves the concert, just before the final, something apparently magical happens when he walks through the crowd.

I will never forget the expressions that lit up their faces in contrast to what they were witnessing. It was as though they saw Christ. Their hearts opened with the thought that he had graced them by being there. P244

Not only did the concertgoers have the show of their life, they were also blessed by the apparition of a godlike creature, according to Ginger. Harmless as this may be, it may not always be the case. Suggesting that mental colour therapy could help with diseases such as AIDS sounds pretty much like potentially dangerous quackery to me.

But for the look behind the curtains of this band, during one of its darkest seasons, this bleeding anorak is thankful.

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 252, 268, 336.

Happy New Year, sistren and brethren of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. Past year was not entirely uneventful.

January had Iggy’s fan-base still mourning about her passing. We have always been discreet about it, but may we thank the many people who have supported Iggy, also financially, over the years? This in shrill contrast with those extraordinary gifted sixties ‘I’m a good friend of Syd’ photographers who immortalised Iggy in their endless collection of coffee table books but always refused to give her one single penny. Nuff said.

Truth is that Syd Barrett is a pretty small, but nicely cultivated, niche market in the great Pink Floyd ocean and that Iggy fandom is an even smaller part of that. The Syd Barrett legacy has been artificially hyped in the past, not that we complain about that, but it seems to have lost some of its value recently.

While the Holy Church blog only publishes articles at an irregular basis, most of the time due to the Reverend’s continuous state of procrastination, its micro-blog counterpart at Tumblr thrives pretty well, with daily submissions. That is because the iggyinuit.tumblr.com page mostly reblogs content from others, which is nice and easy and also very unimaginative, resulting in continuous repetition of the same songs and pictures. But sometimes something interesting sees the light of day and that is what we will present you hereafter.

Tumblrrefugee

A last (and serious) word before the fun starts. Except when you have been living in a micro-bubble, you may have heard that Tumblr recently deleted thousands of blogs, because they contained female nipples (and other physical attributes), for heaven’s sake. This is not the time nor the place to discuss Tumblr’s incompetence (and - frankly - unwillingness) to delete illegal content for the past decade, but we may not stay silent either.

Tumblr's panic reaction consisted of throwing out the baby with the bathwater (pun certainly not intended). December 2018 gave us a new word, a new hashtag, that can now be found on social media that are still - more or less - progressive minded: #Tumblrrefugee. (But even those websites are pretty reluctant, Ello silently adjusted (read: tightened) their community guidelines anti-dating the addendum to make us believe it was changed mid-2017.)

Tumblr's censoring machine however went into frantic overdrive and deleted many pictures that weren't 'porn', not even in their ludicrous definition of that term. Mairabarrett, whose wonderful Tumblr-blog we have shamelessly plundered for the last few months, not only had the above pictures from Syd Barrett at Formentera deleted, but also pictures of her... cat.

It’s a sign of the times but it is weird and confusing that publishing the top middle picture of the Pink Floyd album ‘A Nice Pair’, other than censored, may now be a thing of the past. O tempora, o mores!

Tumblr Overview 2018

Here is a wink and a nod at good old 2018.

The Church wishes to thank: Marsha Allen, Azerty, Charles Beterams, Birdie Hop, Constance Cartmill, Mary Cosco, CCE338, Denis Combet, Jeff Dexter, Ebronte, Seamus Enright, Eternal Isolation, Jenni Fiire, Libby Gausden, Gid Giddoni, Stanislav G. Grigorev, Rich Hall, Hallucalation, Alex Peter Hoffmann, Jay Jeer, Penny Hyrons, Mark Jones, Clay Jordan, London in the 60s & 70s, Mairabarrett, Maggie Matthews, Paul McCann, Iain 'Emo' Moore, Pasquale Muzzupappa, Neonknight, The Nest, Nullrecord, Göran Nyström, David Parker, Peudent, Psych62, Rare Pink Floyd, Porthos (he's the dog), Antonio Jesús Reyes, The Iggy Rose Archives, Mim Scala, Mark Schofield, Allison Star, Swanlee, Robert Treadway, Jean Vouillon, Elizabeth Refna Warner, Nigel Young, Zoe...

The Church was founded ten years ago and the following people helped and inspired us with that: Alien Brain, Astral Piper, Sean Beaver, Bell That Rings, Mark Blake, Charley, Dani, Dark Globe, Bea Day, DollyRocker, Dolly Rocker, Ebronte, Eternal Isolation, Gnome, Juliian Indica (aka Julian Palacios), Kim Kastekniv, Little Minute Gong, Madcap Syd, Metal Mickey, Music Bailey, Mystic Shining, Psych62, Silks (नियत), Stanislav, Stars Can Frighten, Syd Barrett's Mandolin, Anthony Stern, The Syd Barrett Sound...

How could we forget all the others we have forgotten...

♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥ Paula ♥

21st Century Schizoid Man

Musicians, rockers, pop artists,... - name them like you want – live in a bi-focused, nearly schizophrenic world and need to cultivate dissociative identities if they want to survive and stay successful. Just like there are two distinct forms of copyright there are two quasi contradictory sides representing the same artist. Alfa and omega, yin and yang, art and product, band and brand.

Let's get to the point because the above intro sounds like one of those oriental religions that were so popular in the psychedelic sixties.

What I am writing about is the difference between rock music as 'art' and rock music as 'product'. While an artist regards his latest release as 'art', his or her record company invariably defines it as 'product'. For record company executives it makes no difference if they are selling The Dark Side Of The Moon or a singing trout, as long as it keeps on paying for their daily dose of chemical stimulants.

Pink Floyd is so big nowadays, despite being mainly in the recycling business since the end of the last century, that it has evolved from a band into a brand. They are now their own record label, reducing the EMI's and CBS's of this world to mere distributors of their product. When David Gilmour was asked by MTV (in 1987) why the Roger Waters album and tour (Radio KAOS) was not as successful as the Pink Floyd one (A Momentary Lapse of Reason) he came up with the following business-mogul explanation...

The reason is that we’ve all spent... well he [Nick Mason] spent over 20 years. I spent nearly 20 years working on, building up, the Pink Floyd name. I mean, if you liken it to basic crass of advertising… You know if someone left Coca Cola and started up his own soft-drink company with the same recipe it wouldn’t sell as many. It’s very simple.

Direct link for recalcitrant browsers: Pink Floyd & Coca Cola. Full interview (30 minutes) hosted at the Pink Floyd HD channel: A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour [MTV Interview].

Spontaneous Apple Creation

Unfortunately, protecting the brand can have a few disadvantages. Sometimes these are unintentionally funny, like that one time the Pink Floyd company deleted a video from the official David Gilmour website for 'copyright' infringements. There is a less savoury side as well. To fully monetise on the release of 'The Early Years' box the Pink Floyd copyright police deleted dozens of YouTube movies, including 'Nightmare' of psychedelic curiosity Arthur Brown – on his own YouTube channel – just because they legally could. Can Mr. Gilmour and his leprechaun Paul Loasby please explain us how this marginally known performer was a financial threat to the multi-million dollar machine that is Pink Floyd?

For the last couple of decades Pink Floyd has been recycling old stuff, sometimes adding unreleased material to the default product. Just a quick list of compilations and live albums since the late eighties: Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988), Shine On (1992), Pulse (1995), The First Three Singles (1997), Is There Anybody Out There (2000), Echoes (2001), Oh, By The Way (2007), Discovery (2011), Dark Side Of The Moon Immersion & Experience (2011), Wish You Were Here Immersion & Experience (2011), A Foot in the Door (2011), The Wall Immersion & Experience (2012), Their First Recordings (2015),…

There were also 30 and 40 years anniversary editions of The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and The Early Years box-set with its 33 discs, although I have never counted them.

These editions are all of the original or classic line-up and it may have itched a bit at the Gilmour camp that the third and final incarnation of the band, the one without Roger Waters, has never had a separate compilation. Well, that is soon going to change.

Coming Back To Life

Diet Floyd has existed from 1987 with the release of A Momentary Lapse of Reason, until 2014 with the release of The Endless River. That is a total of 27 years or nearly the double in time than the classic line-up that existed from 1968 with the release of the second album A Saucerful of Secrets until 1983 with Waters’ swansong The Final Cut.

Alright, alright, I hear you coming. It is not that the band was very productive in their third incarnation. The classic line-up of Floyd made eleven albums in fifteen years, Diet Floyd just three in 27, not counting the two live ones. On top of that The Endless River could be considered as just another compilation or out-takes album. Basically, Diet Pink Floyd has been in a state of hibernation after 1995 and for nearly two decades only recycled material from the classic heydays has been re-released. The box-sets Oh, By The Way (2007) and Discovery (2011) for instance contain the same 14 albums, and only people with a high-end stereo installation will pretend to hear the difference. How many times can you remaster an album, anyway? It’s not bloody washing powder.

Back to basics. It doesn’t matter if Diet Floyd existed for 8 (1995, Pulse), 19 (2006, On An Island) or 27 years. What does matter is that David Gilmour wants to replenish his pension fund now that he has given a small fortune away by selling his guitars for charity.

What is more of importance, what is still lying in the vaults that hasn’t already been (officially) leaked, one way or another.

Let’s have a small history lesson, shall we?

A New Machine

Around 1985 David Gilmour was thinking of resuscitating Pink Floyd with Nick Mason. There are two main reasons for this, one was the public’s disinterest in Gilmour’s solo-career, a second reason was that contractually Pink Floyd still had to make an album with important financial consequences if they didn’t.

As Waters refused to work any longer with the two others he was – legally and financially – obliged to hand over the Pink Floyd brand to the drummer and the new boy, although it took a while for this bad news to sip in.

Previously Gilmour had been jamming with Jon Carin for a third solo album but when the call for Floyd product became louder, he contacted Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music) and super-producer Bob Ezrin. Not all collaborators brought in suitable material, Eric Stewart (10CC) and writer and poet Roger McGough, who had worked on the Yellow Submarine movie with The Beatles, were invited, but their input didn’t lead to a valid concept (although some demos do exist).

Record executives weren’t that happy either and when David Gilmour sent four tracks over to CBS he was informed that ‘this music doesn’t sound a fucking thing like Pink Floyd’, something that made Roger Waters chuckle. Apparently, Gilmour’s New Coke didn’t taste at all like Waters’ Classic Coca Cola.

Avoid Freud

David Gilmour understood the message and he and his collaborators had the difficult task to give the existent material a much needed Floydian treatment. One possibility was to forcibly turn these tracks into a concept. Carole Pope (from the somewhat underrated band Rough Trade) was flown over from Canada and at least one song was tried out, Peace Be With You, ‘a nice, mid-tempo thing about Roger Waters’. When this experiment failed (again) David Gilmour gave up looking for a portmanteau. It would be a regular album without a storyline, like in the pre-Dark Side Of The Moon days. Anthony Moore (Slapp Happy, Henry Cow) was called in, co-writing the lyrics on three songs. One of those, Learning To Fly, was the much needed turning point. The sound effects, provided by Nick Mason, the guitar, keyboards and vocals felt like a real Pink Floyd song (although one set in the eighties and still without Rick Wright).

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was the Diet Floyd’s showcase that they could exist without Roger Waters, although – in retrospect – it wasn’t a band’s album at all. Co-director Nick Mason had given the drum parts to Carmine Appice and Jim Keltner and the list of keyboard players shows that Rick Wright’s name had been added for legal and public relations reasons, not for his musical input. David Gilmour, talking about Lapse in a 1994 Mojo:

We went out last time with the intention of showing the world. ‘Look we’re still here’, which is why we were so loud and crash-bangy. Echoes, p. 260

Crash-bangy indeed. The Lapse-album suffered from a digital eighties production, David Gilmour admitted. Nick Mason was unhappy that he had been made redundant by a drum computer and a couple of session players and planned to re-record the drum parts. The same can be said about Rick Wright’s input, who only entered the studio when the album was nearly finished and after his wife's plea to take him back aboard. Keyboard parts from live shows were inserted to replace the 80’s synths.

Although the above rumours started in 2011 the revised album was never released, but this will change in November 2019 when it will be an exclusive part of The Later Years boxset.

A Day At The Races

David Gilmour was a busy bee in the early nineties, he made four (unreleased) soundtracks, with or without the help of Rick and Nick: Ruby Takes A Trip (1991), The Art Of Tripping (1993), Colours of Infinity (1995) and La Carrera Panamericana (1992). That last one contained the first Rick Wright and Nick Mason co-compositions since Dark Side Of The Moon / Wish You Were Here. The Colours of Infinity soundtrack has the complete band jamming, lends several themes from Ruby and Art of Tripping and has been partially recycled for The Endless River.

La Carrera Panamericana is an oddball in the Pink Floyd canon. It has been well documented that Nick Mason and the Pink Floyd manager Steve O’Rourke were (are) historic car racing enthusiasts, a hobby for multimillionaires with too much time and money on their hands. In 1991 they could cajole David Gilmour into entering the 7-day Carrera Panamericana race that ran over 2800 km in Mexico. (Rick Wright, according to Nick, was asked as well but preferred sailing the seven seas.)

Not only did they plan to have some fun racing cars, but an inventive Steve O’Rourke, always the hustler, managed to pre-sell the rights for a documentary about the race, with Pink Floyd music, recouping the costs of the expedition. (A side effect is that Gilmour, Mason and O'Rourke look like walking billboards, pretending to be cool.)

Disaster struck on the third day when the C-type Jaguar of the Gilmour / O’Rourke team missed a bend near the city of San Luis Potisi. Gilmour was relatively unharmed but O’Rourke had broken his legs and their race was over. Both were extremely lucky, the band could have literally died that day. But, business is business and the promised movie had to be made with two protagonists out of the race and only the least flamboyant member left to save the furniture.

The movie is not one that will be remembered for its ingenuity, but if you like vintage cars and flimsy interviews it might be worth checking it out, once. The (new) music isn’t that spectacular either, but as one of only four original products Pink Floyd produced in their later career many fans feel this should be a required item in the box set. Yet it will not be included, not as a DVD / Blu-ray, nor as audio.

Keleven at Yeeshkul put it this way:

Omitting La Carrera Panamericana is really disappointing because this seemed like the absolute last opportunity ever to get that music out, and there are some really nice tunes on it unavailable in any format that doesn't have people talking over it from the movie. And this is a set covering a 30-year period that had a total of four releases of new material, yet they decided to skip one of them.

Probably Gilmour is afraid that we will all laugh with his driving skills, nearly killing his manager in the process. A scenario even Roger Waters didn't dare to dream of.

Video killed the radio stars

But what is in this ruddy box then? It will be mainly focused on video material and live concerts, claiming to have six hours of unreleased audio and seven hours of unreleased video, including the mythical Venice 1990 concert. Also included is the Knebworth Silver Clef show with guest star Candy Dulfer. Those two shows are nice to have obviously, but they are not particularly rare amongst collectors. I have them both in legal and less legal releases.

It’s all a bit random actually. There will be a revised Pulse movie, with added and re-edited content, but not the Pulse CD. For that other live album Delicate Sound Of Thunder, both movie and audio versions will be present, remixed and with added material. But, and I will try not to be too overtly cynical, it will not have Welcome To The Machine (on video) for the only reason that this would give more copyrights to… Roger Waters. I kid you not, the Gilmour Waters feud is still alive and kicking. Just imagine these two slightly demented rock stars mud wrestling about a song about being nobody’s fool.

Calling it an 18-disc set is of course not wrong, but it needs to be said that the 5 DVDs in the set duplicate the videos on the Blu-rays, and those Blu-rays more or less duplicate the audio that are on the CDs. Weird as well is that there is no regular Division Bell CD, but the 2014 5.1 mix will be included on Blu-ray. The same goes for The Endless River that has been turned into a movie experience, like The Wall or The Final Cut video EP. I seriously wonder what will be the added value of that.

Love In The Woods

There is also a bunch of music and ‘mister screen’ movies included, but as far as I can remember the Pink Floyd phenomenon mainly turned around music, not around video clips. One thing I would like to see is the Pink Floyd documentary that was shown before the Knebworth concert, containing the Syd Barrett and Iggy the Eskimo home movies that have been reviewed here over a decade ago. I can only hope these will turn up, in one form or another. (See: Love in the Woods (Pt. 1) & Love In The Woods (Pt. 2))

Outtakes, demos and alternative versions

Probably there was a plan to include a CD with ‘later years’ outtakes, demos and alternative versions, but this has been reduced to 6 tracks (4 ‘new’ ones and early versions of Marooned and Nervana). Several tracks that were originally intended to be in the box have been removed at a later stage, presumably by Mr. Gilmour himself, including the already mentioned Peace Be With You and early versions of One Slip and Signs Of Life. And unless something drastically changes the ambient suite The Big Spliff will forever reside in one of the Pink Floyd dungeons.

Giving none away

That some product is missing in this box is one thing. That the initial selling price is well over 500 dollar another. This means that each disc in the set, not counting the doubles, costs over 40 dollar. I wouldn’t mind paying 40 dollar for the revised Momentary Lapse Of Reason record, but in this case you have to come up with 500 dollars for the one record you really want and some extra discs that each contain 80% of easy obtainable material. It is like selling yesterday’s lunch at a higher price than the day before. Or if we may use David Gilmour's comparison: it is like selling New Coke at double the price than the classic one.

Of course Pink Floyd may ask whatever it wants for its music. At least they have always released product of the highest quality, right?

Wrong.

Bit Rot

Recently it has been found out that Blu-rays from The Early Years suffer from bit rot. Bubbles appear on its surface making them unplayable. People who were trying to have them replaced, as a matter of fact this box set only dates from 2016, have been politely advised by the record company to go fuck themselves. I'm lost for words.

This is not the first time that Pink Floyd doesn’t deliver. Many Immersion sets had quality problems, the Shine On box had a book that ended its last page in mid-sentence and a few decades ago Pink Floyd even issued 'remastered' CDs that weren't remastered at all. That was – to use another Floydian term – a pretty fair forgery.

As a Floyd fan since the mid seventies a part of me screams, take my money and give me the box, but – and that is a first for me - another part is sincerely doubting if it is really worth it. Perhaps this is the time to seriously reconsider my lifelong relationship with the Floyd.

To quote RonToon, that Jedi master of all things pink:

Gilmour is very generous when it comes to charities but there is no charity for his fans.

Pink Floyd may be a great band, but has turned into an unreliable brand.

Some pros and cons of The Later Years:

PROS: A Momentary Lapse of Reason remix (stereo and 5.1) - Delicate Sound of Thunder concert on audio and video, remixed and complete - A few Division Bell demos and outtakes - Knebworth 1990, full concert, on audio and video - Previously unreleased documentaries and other material - Previously unreleased Venice 1989 on video - Restored Pulse on video - Screen films, music videos. Arnold Layne, live at The Barbican on 10 May 2007, the Floyd's last performance ever (not on CD unfortunately).

CONS: The price per disc is outrageous, plus there are a lot of doubles. Missing: Live 8, remember Live8? - The Knebworth pre-show documentary, starring Langley Iddens and Iggy the Eskimo - A Momentary Lapse of Reason demos (present on ‘early’ track listings, but removed afterwards) - Alternate single and promo mixes, from A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell (enough to fill a CD on its own) - Echoes (and a few other songs performed live) - La Carrera Panamericana - Peace Be With You - Pre-show Soundscape track (issued as a 22 minutes extra track on the Pulse audio cassette) - Professionally filmed Omni shows in Atlanta, 3-5 November 1987 (although, who needs another live performance by the Floyd?) - The Big Spliff - The Division Bell stereo remix or remaster - Venice 1989 on CD - Welcome To The Machine on Delicate Sound of Thunder video.

The Church wishes to thank: Keleven, Rocco Moliterno, RonToon, the many collaborators on Steve Hoffman Music Forums and Yeeshkul.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 311-321.
Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008, p. 260.
Steve Hoffman Forum Thread: Pink Floyd The Later Years Box Set
Yeeshkul Forum Thread: Pink Floyd - The Later Years

The sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land, dear sistren and brethren, followers of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. But before we shall dwell on that we want to wish you a Happy New Year. So here it is. Happy New Year!

The Later Year$

The ending of past year saw the release of The Later Years, a pretty expensive luxury set of the Diet Floyd. Basically it is David Gilmour’s scientific method to find out where you fans really stand.

The set contains about three times the same product, in different formats, and – although its selling price has descended with about 40% to 50% - it is still fucking expensive for what it’s really worth. If you want you can read our article about it here: The Later Years: Hot Air & Co.

Caught in a cauldron of hate

But that is just economics. What preoccupies us more is that in 2020 the Waters – Gilmour feud has still not been settled. While in the past it was Roger Waters who has been designated as the baddy, it is apparently now David Gilmour’s turn to be the cantankerous one.

In a recent interview, Waters claims that he offered a peace plan to Gilmour, that was promptly rejected. Polly Samson, from her side, twittered that it was not her hubby who rejected the peace plan, but the other guy.

Sigh.

Two bald men fighting over a comb. A golden comb, embellished with crazy diamonds, obviously. Decades ago Nick Mason had the following to say about the ongoing Floyd-war: ”If our children behaved this way, we would have been very cross.” Seems that the 'children' still haven't learned anything.

Caring about Carin

The Later Years box-set has not only divided fans. There has also been some grumbling from Jon Carin, one of the Floyd’s session musicians, who co-wrote Learning To Fly. It first started with Carin complaining on Facebook that the Floyd didn’t wish him a happy birthday. We know the Church has been accused before from inventing stories, but this stuff is so unbelievable you really can’t make it up.

According to Jon Carin he played the bulk of the piano and keyboards on The Division Bell (and quite a few on The Endless River) and not Rick Wright as is generally believed. Why he has waited a quarter of a century to complain about this is something of a mystery, unless you mention that magical word that will turn the meekest lamb into a dog of war: copyrights.

The lost art of conversation

To promote The Later Years David Gilmour has published a 4-part podcast where he carefully reinterprets the past. Unfortunately what has been written about Pink Floyd before - by journalists and biographers - can still be read today, so almost nobody takes the propaganda from Gilmour seriously, unless you weren’t born yet when he turned a solo album into a Floyd one.

And where is Nick Mason, I hear you say? While he used to be the thriving force behind Floydian publicity in the past he is now totally absent.

Weird.

It’s almost as if there is a saucerful of secrets. Or a true enigma, this time.

The best of Tumblr 2019

But let’s finally start with our traditional annual overview of our sister blog on Tumblr that is daily updated with pictures you all have seen before. Have fun!

The Church wishes to thank: Steve Bassett (Madcapsyd), Steve Bennett, Jumaris CS, Joanna Curwood, Maya Deren, Esfera04, Jenni Fiire, Freqazoidiac, Rafael Gasent, Nino Gatti, Rich Hall, Harlequin, Dave Harris, Jabanette, Dion Johnson, Keleven, Simon Matthews, Joanne Milne (Charley), Rocco Moliterno, Peudent, Poliphemo, RonToon, TopPopper, Waelz, Wolfpack, Franka Wright and the many collaborators on Steve Hoffman Music Forums, Yeeshkul and Birdie Hop.

♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

On the birthday of the demi-god that is Syd Barrett for some a hefty package arrived at Atagong mansion. So heavy that we thought at first it was a tax file from one of the six Belgian governments.

As you might have guessed it was our copy of The Later Years that, thanks to an observant member of the Steve Hoffman Music Forum, we could buy at half the price.

Despite our many criticisms about this box, see The Later Years: Hot Air & Co, we have to confess it simply oozes a scent of 'extensive luxury' and our first thought was (and still is) that it is worth every penny we spent on it. A quick remark about the cover and inside art that is exquisite Hipgnosian as well and not the ersatz from The Endless River.

Floydian Slips

Opening the box, like one of these medieval manuscripts, immediately confronts you with four booklets. Three are Pink Floyd tour books, because this is mainly a live set. The fourth contains the lyrics of AMLOR, TDB and TER, if these abbreviations mean something to you. All glossy and not on the grey recycled toilet paper that made the Early Years booklets so unreadable.

When you remove the booklets, there is another thick photo book you can kill a kitten with. Unfortunately its pages are also made of carton; using normal paper would’ve certainly doubled its content. But perhaps that would’ve been overkill as we have already been confronted with about three hundred pictures of Gilmour and Co.

Don’t think you can get to the music now. Hidden under the book is an envelope that contains tour artefacts, posters, stickers and other memorabilia and… two one sided 45RPM singles with etched B-sides.

One contains a rehearsal tape of Lost For Words, the other Arnold Layne as performed by the band at the Barbican on the Syd Barrett tribute concert in 2007, although they were not billed as Pink Floyd if our memory is correct. (For the completists: it appears that both singles exist in two versions, with different artwork on its B-side.)

A Momentary Lapse of Reason

The surprise the ardent fan, your Reverend included, was hoping for is the updated and remixed version of the Floyd’s comeback album A Momentary Lapse of Reason. We have compared both versions and what we think of it will be put hereafter in one of our fantastic Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit reviews.

Warning: Syd Barrett content – none.

Signs Of Life

This very ambient and very dreamy piece is enhanced with an almost Keith-Emersonian keyboard piece of Rick Wright. Magical stuff for those who believe that Rick was the hidden musical force in the band.

Learning To Fly

For me there is almost no difference, perhaps a little guitar lick at 25 seconds that I don’t remember hearing before. The keyboards are a bit more to the front during the middle ‘flight’ section, as well as the musique concrète bits .

Dogs Of War

The Pink Floyd song everybody loves to hate. Basically a simple blues stomper that has been enhanced with Floydian sound effects. Although loathed by a majority of fans this song is much closer to the Floyd’s default (or vintage) sound than – for instance – One Slip or Learning To Fly.

Overall I can’t hear a big difference between both versions, except that the vocals, basses and the rolling keyboard have been given extra emphasis. So one could say it sounds much fatter now than it did before. A few of the saxophone’s weirder noises have been removed as well. So is this one better? Absolutely. Even better.

One Slip

The one with the Kraftwerkian intro. Classic Wright keyboards added throughout and new drums by Nick 'here I am' Mason. As someone remarked on a music forum, this one gives you ‘goosebumps and shivers down the spine‘ throughout the track. The drums are much softer now and also some guitar bits seem to have been added (or mixed from oblivion into the foreground).

I almost consider it a Floydian classic now.

On The Turning Away

This song brings back some memories for me, frightening me a bit how it would sound now. A keyboard drone has been added in the beginning and some scarce keyboard parts throughout the song. As some alumni have pointed out there are new vocals that may or may not have been taken from a live performance. At least David Gilmour doesn’t strain his voice like on the original or at least so it seems.

Many hate this new version, calling it a Frankensteined mess, but I simply can't. For me this has suddenly turned into a Comfortably Numb #2, although the neutral observer will call that a very hyperbolic statement.

Yet Another Movie / Round And Around

The song I prefer the least on Momentary Lapse. It’s a bit boring and one dimensional, if you ask me.

The 2019 version opens with boing boings that threaten to euthanise your loudspeakers. This version has more echo than the original one – listen to Tony Levin’s bass for example that has got a much deserved upgrade. I have also the impression that little pieces of additional music have been added here and there and that the guitar is a bit less in your face. It also seems that Nick Mason has had more than a helping hand in this new version.

Still not the greatest Pink Floyd song, but what a remarkable improvement indeed.

A New Machine / Terminal Frost / A New Machine 2

I’m putting this song cycle together as I have always seen this as one Floydian suite. When it comes to review Pink Floyd I always seem to belong to another planet than the rest of the world anyway. I like A New Machine, evidently not as a song on its own, but as an introduction and coda to Terminal Frost.

And I have always loved Terminal Frost as well. But this re-adapted version seems a bit weird to me, there is something wrong with the piano and overall it sounds a bit bland, with far inferior drums than on the original. Suddenly this has turned into the worst song of the album for me with a mix that was much better in its original version.

A missed chance.

Sorrow

If one Lapse song merits to be described as a Floydian classic it is this one. When David Gilmour started to play Sorrow, on the 28th of July 2016 in Tienen (Belgium), his guitar grumbled so deeply it promptly removed my kidney stones. (See: Coming Back To Life (David Gilmour, Tienen))

The 2019 version of Sorrow tries to imitate that haunting intro, without a doubt. But perhaps I’m still in a lousy mood from the subpar Terminal Frost treatment because it appears to me that also this remix is muddier than the original (and I seem to be the only person on this globe to find that). A plus however is the addition of Rick’s keyboard, especially at the end solo.

I deliberately played Lapse 1987 and Lapse 2019 side-to-side without tinkering, but here is a song I feel the urge for to play with the sliders. Perhaps it will sound better with some of the basses toned down a bit.

Second opinion (after having tinkered with my equaliser settings): it does indeed sound better now, but I can't really vow with my hand on my heart that this version is much better than the original.

Conclusion

So what is the end result? I’m not really sure. A Momentary Lapse of Reason has never been into my favourite top 10 and this remix will probably not change that. For the moment I do seem to prefer this version to the original and I can only hope it will get a separate release one day. For those that rely on streaming or download services I think this is already the case. Those who still believe in CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays will have to buy the entire box, I'm afraid.

Now let’s hope Pink Floyd will finally find the time to re-record Atom Heart Mother one day. However, this seems highly improbable.

Other reviews from what is in this box, may or may not appear in the future. The Church wishes to thank the many collaborators on Steve Hoffman Music Forums and Yeeshkul.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Steve Hoffman Forum Thread: Pink Floyd The Later Years Box Set
Yeeshkul Forum Thread: Pink Floyd - The Later Years

You almost need a degree in Meccano to open the Pink Floyd Later Years box. There are many goodies packed inside, although you have to sell one of your kidneys to be able to buy one. The three post-Waters studio albums, for example, can be found in 5.1 surround and/or high resolution stereo mixes. That is what these double DVDs and Blu-Rays are for. (Logically, the Momentary Lapse surround mixes have only been made for the remixed and updated 2019 version, not the original 1987 one. You can read our review of that album at: A Momentary Relapse.)

The Endless River Film

The Endless River has been turned into a movie experience by long-time Floyd collaborator Ian Emes. Opinions differ about this one, ranging from ‘I just watched it once out of curiosity’ till ‘The film is really nicely done. You’ll enjoy it!’.

At first the Holy Church was not that interested in this. The Reverend orated in a previous article: “I seriously wonder what will be the added value of that.” (See: The Later Years: Hot Air & Co.)

Is it merely ‘just a compilation of ethereal drone footage’ filmed in slow motion or is there more at hand? Because most reviews of The Later Years seem to forget about this feature, with the exception of Bob Eichler in his article: Pink Floyd - The Later Years (1987-2019).

...imagine that Stanley Kubrick was annoyed that too many people had figured out what 2001 was about, so he set out to make an even more abstract sequel, inspired by Pink Floyd videos. Outer space images, CGI, lush landscapes, complex machinery, people moving in slow motion, interesting architecture shot from weird angles, and a cast of characters who appear throughout the whole thing. Inspired no doubt by the album's title, water is a major theme of the video – oceans, rivers, streams, waterfalls, rapids, fountains, etc... My brain kept trying to make some sense out of the random-seeming images, but it's probably better to just let it wash over you.

This exactly describes our feelings after watching the movie, but the Church wouldn’t be the Church without adding its own comments here and there. While watching the movie we found – often subliminal – links to Floydian artwork from the past decades or to other material from the Hipgnosis art factory.

Walk the Layne

But before we get to the feature film of our cinematic evening, let’s have a look at some of the shorts that can be found on the same disc. We are talking about the last Pink Floyd performance, not – as generally believed – the one at Live8, but the Arnold Layne song at the Syd Barrett Tribute Concert on the 10th of May 2007 at the Barbican. It can be found twice: once as a backstage rehearsal and once at the concert. The rehearsal doesn’t have Rick, but a cool as ever Nick Mason who is drumming on a chair, meaning he uses a chair for a drum. It’s fun to watch ex-Oasis bass player Andy Bell, who wasn't even born when Arnold Layne was a hit, learning the tricks of the trade.

Unfortunately Polly yaps a lot in the background, spoiling the fun. But that’s how she is known in Cambridge Mafia circles anyway.

From a far better quality is the concert take, filmed by Gavin Elder and using some shots from Simon Wimpenny and Kees Nijpels. The Floyd plays the song as has always been intended, without extra frills, short and sweet. Rick has the honour to do the vocals and it does seem a bit weird that a backup keyboard player (Jon Carin) was added, but Rick was probably already sick by then. The interaction between these three old geezers is magical and their smiles speak volumes.

A great document with an even greater symbolical and sentimental value.

Here I Go

So here we go for our review of the Ian Emes Endless River film, in 95 screenshots and a lot of text. Better scans can be found on our Tumblr page, using the Ian Emes tag.

As we have said before, in our Endless River album review from a couple of years ago, the album is divided in four instrumental suites, ending with Gilmour’s and Samson’s Floydian eulogy Louder Than Words (see: While my guitar gently weeps...).

Things Left Unsaid

Things Left Unsaid starts with a very 2001-ish view from outer space with the sun and earth floating by. Just when you expect Kubrick’s embryo to appear a human form zooms in. In a corner you can spot something that could be a nod to the dark alien monolith that plays such a big role in Kubrick’s masterpiece. Perhaps it is the black ‘Telepatic Wave Receiver and Transmitter’ that adorns The Led Zeppelin Presence album, although Storm Thorgerson used to call that the object. (This cover can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Presence.)

Stanley Kubrick and Pink Floyd have a certain past together. Kubrick wanted to use the Atom Heart Mother suite for A Clockwork Orange, but (so the story goes) a stubborn Roger Waters refused when he discovered that Kubrick wanted to cut up the music to fit the film scenes. This is an answer Kubrick probably didn’t expect as the record shop scene in that movie shows the Atom Heart Mother album, twice.

This wasn’t the end of the Kubrick – Waters saga. Legend has it that Roger Waters wanted to sample some dialogue from 2001 on his album Amused To Death. This time it was Kubrick’s turn to refuse, and Waters – in his default charming way – insulted the movie maker with a cryptic message on that same album. (The 2015 remix/remaster of Amused To Death has the HAL 9000 message from 2001 restored and the backwards insult removed.)

It’s What We Do

With It’s What We Do we return to Earth with scenes of futuristic skyscrapers and a menacing octahedron metal structure floating in the air, as an alternative to the Star Trek Borg cube.

Possible link: The Yes album Going For The One has a Hipgnosis sleeve with a man looking at out-of-this-world-ish skyscrapers and also the Quatermass' Quatermass sleeve plays with the same subject. (These covers can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Going For The One & Quatermass.)

The following scenes show us bridges, machines and cogwheels, a clear hint to Welcome To The Machine. (The track itself is a mild copycat of what we could hear on the Shine On You Crazy Diamond instrumental parts.)

Four people, wearing white masks, run in slow motion through a tunnel. Masks have obviously been used before in the Floyd’s and Hipgnosis imagery. Just think of the masked children in Another Brick In The Wall or the cover of the Pink Floyd live album Is There Anybody Out There? (This cover can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Is There Anybody Out There?)

After a succession of psychedelic liquid light style scenes, we cut to some water splashing and yet another drone shot, flying over a cobbled beach and the sea. A woman rises out of the water, a hint to the Wish You Were Here diver artwork probably, and is followed by three other persons, raising from the water like the zombies from that atrocious flick Zombie Lake.

The Pink Floyd Shine On box also has several (nude) persons rising out of the water. The same imagery can be found on the Rick Wright solo album Broken China. (These covers can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Wish You Were Here, Shine On, Broken China.)

We are confronted with an Escher-like semi-transparent object spinning around in the air.

Ebb And Flow

For an unknown reason, the persons who came out of the sea, run through some fields. Night falls and we see the starry sky and the aurora borealis.

Sum

For the bulk of the following song the same four people run around through fields and forests. There are plenty of nature and water shots. People are cooling down, playing and resting in the river. Much more scenes of trees, waterfalls and clouds throughout Skins and Unsung.

Skins

Skins shows the more aggressive side of the river.

Unsung

Unsung gives a more relaxing mood with the sun settling down.

Anisina

The beautiful Anisina starts with boiling lava and a pair of hands grabbing mud and kneading it into a shapeless form. Close-ups of colourful nature scenes before the rain falls.

The Lost Art of Conversation

It is raining and The Lost Art of Conversation concentrates on dripping leaves and a spider taking shelter in its web. We see some tiny fishes (and a very big one as well). Could this be a nod to the Pulse album art that shows the evolution from sea to land animals? (This cover can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Pulse.)

On Noodle Street

On Noodle Street shows us a bridge over a river that runs through a city. We look up at skyscrapers again.

Night Light

People walk in the street to their work or to a train or airport terminal. A hint perhaps to the screen movies that accompanied the Dark Side Of The Moon shows.

Allons-y (1)

Allons-y reverts back to revolving city scenes and water spitting fountains. The four people walk barefoot in the grass, falling down in a field of ferns in the middle of a forest.

Autumn ‘68

Autumn ‘68 has the four actors wrestling and lying on a grass field in the mountains. The spinning multi-cornered object appears again in the sky, confronting the people who look at it. It then disappears into space, where it seems to be heading for a far-away nebula.

Allons-y (2)

Allons-y (2) really seems like 2001 revisited with a flight through space and a human form that appears in the vacuum. This could be influenced by the hanging man artwork on the Pulse album. (This cover can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Pulse.)

Pink Floyd has long time been associated with space and space rock (see our article from 2014: Still First in Space. NOT!) and most fans are well aware of the fan-made synchronisation between Echoes and the 'Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite' segment from Kubrick’s 2001 movie. If you have never experienced it, and you should, here is one of the many places were you can watch it: Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite (Vimeo link).

After the interstellar flight the movie shows the four protagonists, covered in multicoloured spots, dancing in the vacuum of space, while scientific and mathematical equations appear on the screen.

On what appears to be a dashboard from an extraterrestrial space ship some words appear in vaguely recognisable letters. It is as if multiple letters have been stacked on top of each other. Recognisable are the words ‘Infinite’ and ‘the dawn\mist’. That last one is a phrase from the refrain of High Hopes:

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river

These lyrics read like a synopsis for Ian Emes’ The Endless River movie and they can be deciphered, with some difficulties, on the alien monitor.

But the surprises aren’t over yet. At the left hand side of the screen appear scrambled letters that form the nearly illegible words ‘Publius & Enigma’.

There we have it. After more than 25 years a new mention of this ongoing Floydian riddle.

Publius Enigma

For those who are too young to remember. The Publius Enigma was an internet brain-teaser, a puzzle evolving around the 1994 Pink Floyd album The Division Bell.

In the morning of the 11th of June 1994, when the band was playing two nights at the New York Yankee stadium a cryptic message was send to the then leading Pink Floyd Usenet newsgroup. It was signed by a poster who named himself Publius and who used an anonymous e-mail service to deliver his message.

In this and about two dozen other posts he tried to convince the fans that The Division Bell music, lyrics and artwork contained an enigma and that the person who found the solution would be rewarded with a price.

Obviously a lot of fans were highly sceptical about these pretty vague messages (especially as there were also mails from pranksters going around). In order to prove his existence Publius promised to give a sign during a Pink Floyd concert at the Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey. During the song Keep Talking (!) the light display at the front of the stage spelled out the words ENIGMA PUBLIUS.

From then on a large group of fans tried to find a solution to the enigma. The hints from Publius were deliberately very vague and it was pretty unclear where to start looking for clues. Basically Publius was asking for an answer but without giving the question first. There were rumours of people digging holes in fields around Cambridge, because they thought a ‘treasure chest’ might have been buried there. Others thought that the solution might simply be a code word, an anagram buried in the lyrics, like the word ‘enigma’ that can be found in the third strophe of Wearing The Inside Out.

Publius kept the Enigma search alive by adding hints that only added to the confusion. In an unpublished report from a Belgian fan, that the Church could look into, it was proven that most messages were send in the early hours after a show or during a day off in the Floyd’s busy touring schedule. Publius undoubtedly was one of the (many) people joining the Pink Floyd world tour and someone who could manipulate light and screen settings during a show.

Pulse

On 20 October 1994 Pink Floyd recorded their London Earl’s Court show for what later would become the Pulse VHS release. During Another Brick In The Wall the word ENIGMA was projected on the big round screen behind the band, giving the Reverend a mild heart attack when he watched the show a couples of week later on television.

For the VHS release though the word was obfuscated by adding extra lines and stripes, just as it is has been scrambled now on The Endless River movie. (On the Pulse DVD release the ENIGMA slide has been removed and replaced by one reading E=MC2. However, traces of the original can be found if one browses through the scene frame by frame.)

Over the years the band has reluctantly confessed that the Enigma riddle was basically a hoax, started by the record company, although the Church of Iggy the Inuit still suspects that Nick Mason, who has been known for his pranks and dry wit, may have had a hand in it.

The Publius Enigma died an unsuspected death when the anonymous mail account suddenly disappeared, making it impossible for fans to post a solution and claim the price, if there ever was a riddle to start with and a price to collect.

Over the years ‘new’ Publius Enigma sightings have been discovered, but these all came from outside or unreliable sources. Until now… although we sincerely doubt that the crazy hunt for fame and fortune will start all over again.

But what a long strange trip it has been!

Talkin’ Hawkin’

Talkin’ Hawkin’ continues with the multi-coloured dancing silhouettes, followed by the clocks of Time. As a matter of fact, the original 'Time' backdrop movie was made by none other than Ian Emes (Time at YouTube).

Some of the people appear packed in linen, like a mummy or a ghost, others wear their masks again. It reminds us of the Hipgnosis artwork for the Alan Parsons Project ‘Tales of Mystery And Imagination’ and/or ‘Frances The Mute’ from Mars Volta. (These covers can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Tales of Mystery And Imagination & Frances The Mute.)

The aliens arrive in the city during the night with the street lights on and the buildings lit. They travel through a tunnel.

Calling / Eyes To Pearls

The aliens transform into liquid ghosts in a nightmarish scene. The city is dark but has tunnels that are lit. Somehow the aliens are trying to become human and they roam through abandoned buildings.

Those that have masks take it off. A couple of characters have difficulties breathing. Their faces are stuck in bubbles, like a liquid cosmonaut’s helmet, and they fight to survive. (There is a Hipgnosis cover for the album Deliverance from the French disco band Space. It has a woman, floating upside down in the desert, with an astronaut’s helmet on. This cover can be found at the Hipgnosis Covers website: Deliverance, mildly NSFW.)

But apparently they succeed and overcome the nightmare. They are running through the landscape, sometimes hand in hand. One of the personae has the multi-cornered space anomaly tattooed on her arm.

Update December 2020 / January 2021: According to Tomhinde and Kit Rae at Yeeskul the official Calling track on YouTube uses a slightly different mix than the one on the album and in the Later Years movie :

Around 0:45 there's some added sound effects and an extra synth (.../...) and at 1:00 there's a slightly extended section.

This was confirmed by Brainysod. Apparently the Youtube version is about 50 seconds longer than the CD / DVD / BluRay version.

Surfacing

The band is running to the forest were they either find some rest or are falling down. It makes one wonder if they have succeeded transforming into humans or if they have failed in their mission. There is ambiguity in the scenes and they can be interpreted differently.

One of the aliens looks up at the sky, where the singularity has appeared again. It is not sure if it is there to rescue or to abandon them.

Louder Than Words

The last song of the movie shows several of the previous scenes again, but some have been turned upside down or are running backwards.

It could be that the aliens have finally accepted that earth is their new home. A couple meets at the seaside and sees the object that disappears again in outer space, leaving them while flashbacks from the previous songs are repeated.

The movie ends with yet another scene from a bubbling river before switching over to the earth seen from space again.

There is a glimpse of a black obelisk that transforms into the multi-shaped interdimensional spaceship.

Conclusion

Although weird and filled with contradicting symbolism The Endless River movie isn’t half as bad as we feared it would be. Ian Emes has turned it into an interesting visual spectacle with many enigmatic scenes and a pretty intriguing, but we fear, non-existing storyline. (Although the viewer will vainly try to reconstitute a consistent story out of it.) It could well be that we will get this DVD (or Blu-Ray) out whenever we want to listen to The Endless River, that is slowly but surely rising in our ranking from preferred ambient albums, whether you call it a Pink Floyd album or not.

The Church wishes to thank the many collaborators on Steve Hoffman Music Forums, Yeeshkul and the quite fantastic Hipgnosis Covers website.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

The Endless River screenshots on Tumblr: Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5 - Page 6 (Publius Enigma) - Page 7 - Page 8 - Page 9 - Page 10
Tags used on Tumblr: ian emes - the endless river - pink floyd - the later years - publius enigma - the division bell

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 153.
Hipgnosis Covers at http://www.hipgnosiscovers.com/
Steve Hoffman Forum Thread: Pink Floyd The Later Years Box Set
Powell, Aubrey: Hipgnosis, Les Pochettes Mythiques du Célèbre Studio, Gründ, Paris, 2015 (French edition of Hipgnosis Portraits).
Thorgerson, Storm & Powell, Aubrey: For The Love Of Vinyl, Picturebox, Brooklyn, 2008.
Thorgerson, Storm & Curzon, Peter: Mind Over Matter 4, Omnibus Press, London, 2007.
Thorgerson, Storm & Curzon, Peter: Taken By Storm, Omnibus Press, London, 2007.
Thorgerson, Storm: Walk Away René, Paper Tiger, Limpsfield, 1989.
Yeeshkul Forum Thread: Pink Floyd - The Later Years

Cash Cows

On the 25th of September 2020, Neptune Pink Floyd came with a scoop that wasn't known to the two other 'biggies' of Pink Floyd fandom. That or else they were too preoccupied writing favourable articles about the redundant re-re-release of the live album Delicate Sound Of Thunder, that can also be found in The Later Years box-set. If you already have The Later Years the only reason to buy Delicate Sound Of Thunder 2020 is to have an extra set of postcards. They don’t come cheap nowadays.

Neptune Pink Floyd

We are pretty sure Neptune won't mind quoting them:

Pink Floyd collectors will be very excited to learn that a recording, thought lost forever, featuring Pink Floyd as a backing band, has been found after many years. It will be available for auction on 16th October in Wessex, England at 12 pm BST.

The song in question is Early Morning Henry, considered to be one of those Floydian holy grails. For decades fans thought that it had disappeared or that it was hidden in the archives of Norman Smith who took the tape on the 20th of October 1967. The reason why Smith took it home was that it wasn’t a Floyd original, but a cover of a Billy Butler song. If you want to know the complete story we can guide you to our article that appeared in 2019: Singing A Song In The Morning.

It is not Smith’s ‘plastic spool’ that is for sale, but a 3 minutes and 55 seconds one-sided acetate with the Early Morning Henry song. This may be of importance while our story develops.

The acetate is part of a very huge collection that was bought by Modboy1, in 2018.

Myself and my partner bought one of the UK’s biggest Music publishing company library 2 years ago, over 500,000 items, that included about 50,000+ unreleased Demo Acetates, most only had the track name, sometimes the publishing company name and if very lucky the writer’s names and if even more lucky the artist’s name.

The one-sided acetate didn’t have the artist’s name, only the title of the song ‘Earley Morning Henry’ and the name of the publishing company ‘Jamarnie Music’.

It was first thought this was an unknown David Bowie track, but when they did some extra investigations the name Pink Floyd popped up.

From David Parker’s excellent book Random Precision, that has become a collector’s item by itself, we know a bit more of those particular October weeks in 1967.

A saucerful of songs

The Floyd had been busy with a couple of new tunes, including Vegetable Man and Jug Band (aka Jugband) Blues. On Friday, 20 October they canned a highly avant-garde 9-part soundtrack for a John Latham project and two other tracks: Intremental (aka Reaction In G?) and the slightly fantastic In The Beechwoods. Except for Intremental these tracks have been released, 49 years later, on The Early Years.

On Monday morning, 23rd of October, the Floyd had a two hours session with 8 takes for track E66409. It is David Parker’s educated guess that E66409 stands for Rick Wright’s Paintbox.

If Glenn Povey is right in Echoes they headed for Bath, 115 miles from London, where they had an afternoon gig at The Pavilion.

In the evening, at 7 o’clock, the boys returned to Abbey Road for a session on Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun. When that was done they recorded Early Morning Henry, in one take, to end the day. On the EMI Recording Sheet, the track's Reel Number has been struck through and there is the message that Norman Smith took the plastic reel with him.

The term ‘plastic reel’ is of importance as well. Shakesomeaction, who was a studio engineer in the seventies, further explains:

The fact that it says on the Abbey Road Recording Sheet “Taken by Norman Smith on Plastic Spool” also means this was not recorded for full release but just as a demo, because if it was recorded for a proper release they would have used a 2” master tape, not a plastic spool which is only 1/4” tape and much lesser quality!

According to Modboy1 here is what happened in that late-night session:

Norman “Hurricane” Smith managed William “Billy” Butler who was also in the studio at the same time and asked Pink Floyd as a favour to record this track, William wrote so that it can be used as a Demo.

And…

William “Billy” Butler was in Abbey Road studios at the same time (he was also a sound engineer), so he sang on the track with Syd Barrett probably supplying harmony vocals and Pink Floyd playing, it was done in 1 take.

It is a plausible theory, especially if we know that Norman Smith was not only their producer but also a Pink Floyd shareholder. According to Neil Jefferies, the author of Hurricane’s ‘autobiography’, Smith had a 12,5% part in the company. Years later, in something that must have been the stupidest financial decision of the century, Smith sold his shares to finance his solo career. A couple of months later, The Dark Side Of The Moon hit the shelves.

But before we continue our article let’s have a listen to a snippet of the Billy Butler – Pink Floyd acetate, found on YouTube. As the copyrights of the song still belong to Jamarnie Music (although that is debatable) and the seller wants to give the exclusivity to the new owner only 50 seconds of the almost four minutes song has been made public. It has also been confirmed that the track will be removed once the auction has been finished. (But a good soul managed to upload it again.)

First impressions

In the mid-eighties when David Gilmour gave an early version of the A Momentary Lapse Of Reason album to Columbia executive Stephen Ralbovsky, the record boss allegedly replied dryly with ‘this music doesn’t sound a fucking thing like Pink Floyd’.

About the same can be said of Early Morning Henry. It doesn’t sound Floydian at all. Several fans thought so, including the Reverend of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit.

Borja Narganes Priego

It doesn't sound like Pink Floyd to my ears. And the guitar is not near close to Syd's guitar style… a bit of mystery with this…

Ewgeni Reingold

Does not sound to me as PF…

Ulrich Angersbach

I don't think that this track has anything to do with Pink Floyd 1967.

Second thoughts

But after the initial shock, fans and anoraks started to slowly change their minds. As Hallucalation remarked, Remember Me from the 1965 sessions doesn't sound a bit like Pink Floyd either, yet it is canon.

Edgar Ascencio

Correct me if I'm wrong here but the bass does sound like Roger Waters’ playing…
I've been listening to it for the good part of an hour and though I may still be wrong I think I've picked up on Roger's bass and Rick's backing vocals in the chorus…

Randall Yeager

To me, the drums and piano sound like Nick and Rick, especially playing it safe on a first take.

Hallucalation

It's obviously Waters playing on bass, by the way.

Jon Charles Newman

I dunno — most of it sounds like it could be anybody, although the bass could be Roger, and the harmony vocal sounds a little like Rick. It wouldn't be surprising if Syd didn't take part. I'm reserving judgment until there's more evidence or verification.

That last comment has a good point. What if this is a recording of Billy Butler with Roger Waters on bass and Rick Wright on keyboards, but without Syd Barrett? Who plays the guitar?

More thoughts

Friend of Squirrels has the following theory.

After listening to it again I completely agree that it does sound like Roger and has the famous Rickenbacker tone. The guitar sounds acoustic and pretty certain it is a nylon string guitar. Have never known Syd to play a nylon string guitar that is usually used for classical and bossa nova.

I believe Butler has a background in jazz guitar, sounds like nylon strings...

And Goldenband concludes:

I tend to think it's unlikely Syd would have played on the track, and agree that it's easier to imagine a scenario in which the other three backed up BB.
Tricky chord changes, by the way!

Conclusion

Although there is still the theoretical possibility that the ‘plastic spool’ and the acetate are two different recordings, with different musicians, there seems to be a growing consensus that at least two members of Pink Floyd helped Billy Butler out on this demo recording.

David Parker is practically 100% sure:

The fact the recording offered is an acetate doesn't mean it's not the same recording as the tape taken by Norman Smith; acetates were a common format for distributing publishing demos at the time.

It is not sure if Syd Barrett was there. The work on Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun was mainly overdubs, by adding vibraphone and ‘voices’. Even if Syd was in the studio, the guitar on the acetate is probably played by Billy Butler.

Theoretically, Nick Mason wasn’t needed either. Norman Smith was a fine drummer who replaced Nick Mason a couple of weeks before on Remember A Day (although some anoraks claim it is See-Saw instead). It's still open for discussion.

But it seems almost certain that Roger Waters and Rick Wright can be heard on the record.

The value of this acetate is estimated between 3,000 to 5,000 GBP. Unless Billy Butler and Pink Floyd start bidding against each other. You can have a go as well, if you'd like at: William "Billy" Butler (William "Henry" Butler) - "EARLY MORNING HENRY", 1967.

You gotta be crazy

At Yeeshkul, Azerty asked Pink Floyd archivist Lana Topham, who passed the hot potato to Paul Loasby. The reply from the Floyd management was short and sweet.

It seems to be a fake.

But several Floyd scholars simply refuse to believe this. To quote a pretty well known überfan whose name we will not give out of respect:

Lana Topham and Paul Loasby aren't going to know shit. I'd be slightly surprised if even Nick and Roger could remember the session after all these years.

So are we back at square one? Not exactly. On the Neptune Pink Floyd forum Shakesomeaction gave some extra info. He had a look at the Jarmanie Library files and here is what he found.

The library reference number was D 375 (on the Acetate sleeve), which complied with the library files of D 375 and they stated:
COMPOSER / VOCALS - William Butler,
BACKING BAND - PINK FLOYD,
RECORDING DATE 23/10/67,
PRODUCER : NORMAN SMITH,
COPYRIGHT - JARMANIE MUSIC,
UNRELEASED and
“DO NOT REMOVE - NO TAPE AVAILABLE” (which means there was no master tape in the library).

But you can’t win a fight against Pink Floyd. Paul Loasby, whom we know as a man who insults and harasses webmasters of ‘independent’ fan-sites if they write something Paul Loasby doesn’t want them to write, morphed into his favourite leprechaun character and did what he does best: threatening people. Shakesomeaction testifies:

The Auction room had to take the name of Pink Floyd down, after a threatening phone call from the manager.
Although there was no denying this was Pink Floyd backing.
Sad that people with so much money care about some minor demo they have done as a favour back in the day…

At the auction house the name Pink Floyd has been removed and replaced with 'big name world renowned group'.

*Following a phonecall from the management of a big name world renowned group we have decided to remove their name from this listing.

Perhaps it is appropriate here to quote something from a Pink Floyd tune:

For hard cash, we will lie and deceive
Even our masters don't know
The webs we weave

Paul Loasby's attitude created something of a mini-Streisand effect. How does it come he never reacts when people sell fake acetates on the web, for thousands of dollars, but when someone puts on a genuine one, he suddenly turns into Floydzilla?

What the butler saw

After Paul Loasby so eloquently expressed his master’s voice it was time for Jumaris to chime in:

This is Juliet, I am William Billy Butler‘s daughter, and I can confirm that it is my father singing on this recording. Yes, it is a song that he wrote, and yes Norman Smith did take it to Pink Floyd to record a demo. However, with that said, I don’t believe that the backing band is Pink Floyd.

Talking about a drawback. But the next day there was some more exciting news. Juliet:

I will say that Norman Smith was shopping dad around to different bands around that time. (…) With Pink Floyd, there was speculation that they were going to replace Barrett. I think there was some hope that they would hear dad‘s voice, and Early Morning Henry and see where that landed, but it was subtle.

Could it be the band was already thinking of replacing Syd Barrett? The thought alone is heresy, shout some fans, but perhaps the seeds of what would be inevitable, a few months later, were already subliminally germinating.

Norman Smith wasn’t an idiot and perhaps he was indeed thinking of an alternative future for the band, with a new singer/guitarist and new songs. Like we stated before, Norman was not just a producer, he was a shareholder in the Pink Floyd company and trying to save his investment.

So, he might have thought, let’s send Syd home after the work on Set the Controls and bring in this new guy, to “test out” one of the songs he wrote. Won’t do any harm, will it?

Norman Smith has always been something of a hustler. Back to Juliet Butler:

We have buckets of reel to reels. And we are currently trying to gather as much information about his life, and his music for some kind of project. (...)

But of course, it’s not the only recording of it [Early Morning Henry]. We have numerous recordings of it on reel to reel. But nothing on digital yet. We’re working to convert it. We might be able to compare the different recordings and pinpoint a date to see if it corresponds to anything in our archives. If we don’t have [the] tape [from the Pink Floyd session] then Norman Smith’s daughter would have it.

We are also wondering if there’s a chance that Norman Smith overdubbed dad‘s voice onto the track, and then cut the vinyl from that.

When Juliet was given the news that the Jamarnie Music Library mentions Pink Floyd as the backing band on the acetate her earlier opinion changed completely:

It is a very curious catalogue entry attached to this vinyl that seems to indicate that this, in fact, was Pink Floyd as the backing band.

You have to remember most of the musicians working in the scene were moonlighting around town. My dad might not have recognized the musicians he played with as being Pink Floyd per se.

And from our previous Billy Butler article (Singing A Song In The Morning), we know that he moonlighted a lot, singing on sound-alike records and having a single under the pseudonym Prock Harson.

Will certainly be continued…

Update October 7, 2020: we received a message from the seller of this acetate and we quote:

Can I please ask you to remove my name from any mentions on your article at the Church Of Iggy, as it is personal information and by now it has come to defamation of character and if not removed I am very sorry but I will have to contact my solicitors.

His name has been removed from the above article (and it has also disappeared from the Neptune Pink Floyd article, BTW, where several forum posts have suddenly been censored).

PS: at the time of publication of this article the two big ‘independent’ Pink Floyd fansites did not find the time yet to write about this pretty important discovery. When they are good dogs Pink Floyd sometimes throws them a bone in.

Auction Result

On the 16th of October the acetate was sold for the surprisingly low sum of £3,000, but according to the seller that is pretty much what was expected. If it had been a Billy Butler song, without some of the Pink Floyd members, it would have stayed in the three digit range.

Meanwhile the seller has removed the YouTube sample video from the web, as he had promised to do.

Many Thanks to Antonio Jesús Reyes from Solo En Las Nubes for warning the Church about this news.
Many Thanks to Neptune Pink Floyd for mentioning the Holy Church in their article.
Many Thanks: Ulrich Angersbach, Edgar Ascencio, Azerty, Juliet Butler, Friend of Squirrels, Goldenband, Hadrian, Hallucalation, Jumaris, Modboy1, David Parker, Borja Narganes Priego, Jon Charles Newman, Punk Floyd, Ewgeni Reingold, Shakesomeaction, Mark Sturdy, Wolfpack, Randall Yeager.
Many Thanks to the beautiful people of Birdie Hop, Late Night, Neptune Pink Floyd & Yeeshkul.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

This article is a follow-up of: Singing A Song In The Morning. More and better images at our Tumblr: Billy Butler.

Links:
Neptune Pink Floyd: Early Morning Henry featuring Pink Floyd Found – Listen Now!
YouTube: Pink Floyd & William Billy Butler Early Morning Henry Unreleased UK 1967 Demo Acetate, Psych !!!
Wessex Auction Rooms: VINYL - PINK FLOYD & William Billy Butler (William Henry Butler) - EARLY MORNING HENRY, 1967

Forum Posts:
Birdie Hop: Early Morning Henry
Steve Hoffman Music Corner: Pink Floyd - Fictional Second Album with Syd Barrett
Late Night: Early Morning Henry found!
Neptune Pink Floyd: Listen to Early Morning Henry featuring Pink Floyd
Yeeshkul: Listen to Early Morning Henry featuring Pink Floyd

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 319.
Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p. 103-105.
Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008, p. 69.

Kraftwerk

Somewhere in the latter days of the previous century, a journalist wrote that the return of Kraftwerk was more relevant than the return of Pink Floyd. Even as a lifelong Floyd-anorak I had to agree with that opinion, but I need to confess that their quirky Autobahn has been in my personal top-10 for decades. It is as essential as, for instance, Echoes.

But things can rapidly change and in the second millennium, the German kling-klang machine transformed itself in a money-grabbing caricature of its former self. Just like Pink Floyd ©1987, they trans-substantiated from a band into a brand.

2020

Nobody would have predicted that two out of the three remaining Pink Floyd members would play an important role in the musical fish-pond of today. And yet…

Roger Waters

Roger Waters has issued a live US + THEM that is loosely built around his latest (and excellent) studio album Is This The Life We Really Want? (Read our review at: Louder than Words.) If you take a closer look at the tracklisting you see that only three numbers of that album have been incorporated and that the rest (18 tracks) are basically a Pink Floyd greatest hits package. Nothing wrong with that. You need to give the people what they want, the Reverend included.

I know Waters has left his former band for 35 years now, but I can't get used to singers who replace the David Gilmour parts. They may look as uncombed as Gilmour in the seventies, but they still sound as a surrogate band. It also feels to me that saxophone player Ian Ritchie was having something of an off day on this release. The girl choir, Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig from Lucius sing heavenly but seem to have taken their outfits from a Star Trek TOS garage sale.

All in all, they’re a weird lot, but an excellent and tight band. Roger Waters walks around a lot, spastically attacking his bass guitar and happily mumbling to himself, like grandpa on a family reunion.

I find this release very moving at places, especially with the classic pieces that are more directed towards Waters, than on a David Gilmour solo concert. I love the fact that ‘Brick’ was given a long treatment with the intro piece ‘The Happiest Days Of Our Lives’ and that it was extended with part three of the song, instead of the pretty superfluous ‘Ballad of Jean Charles de Menezes’ that can be heard on his (abominable) Wall album.

It also needs to be said that Roger Waters is getting old and somehow one can hear that. The boys are not getting any younger and David Gilmour’s voice, as well, has suffered as could be witnessed on some of his Von Trapped Family video streams.

As an old and grumpy man myself I love the shots of young people enjoying and singing to the music, often with tears in their eyes. Makes me think of me, some 30-40 years ago…

Tears in my eyes are still my subjective parameter to measure the quality of a Pink Floyd related product. Wish You Were Here does it every time, so logically on US + THEM as well. On the scale of used Kleenex tissues, this is a very good product, even if Shine On You Crazy Diamond is missing.

Who says "Roger Waters" can't ignore the political messages he likes to throw around, sometimes even interfering with the music as in Money that is split into two parts by (images of) an atomic explosion. But in other places, it is as if the editors didn't dare to show the political messages too much… afraid that it might hurt the selling figures. Money, it’s still a gas.

Despite some flaws, US + THEM is as good as it gets. Roger Waters has taken back the leadership of what was once laughingly named Pink Floyd.

Nick Mason

Live At The Roundhouse could be a live document of an entirely different band. There is only one point of convergence between Roundhouse and US + THEM and that is the presence of One Of These Days. For the rest, both products are completely contrasting.

Live At The Roundhouse from Saucerful of Secrets is very close to fantastic although it doesn’t pretend to sound like Pink Floyd at all. Nick Mason has always been the coolest member and he is the only one who has been present in all Floydian incarnations from the past fifty-five years. He was already a member when the band went under the name Abdabs or another of those silly names they had at their beginning.

While Gilmour and Waters try to be a carbon copy of their previous grandeur Mason seems to have said 'fuck it'. He assembled a gang of cool-sounding dudes, playing pub rock style covers of a band Mason once used to drum for. In a way it's blasphemous and that is what it makes so attractive.

These guys seem to have fun when they play a song, especially Guy Pratt, but he has always been some kind of a nutjob. He should assemble his many rock'n'roll anecdotes in a book and call it My Bass And Other Animals or something like that if he ever finds the time.

While the kids are having fun, grandpa Mason sits behind his drums friendly smiling and overlooking the brats on stage. It’s, in a way, very satisfying to watch. I feared a few times that Nick might fall asleep, but it was a false alert.

On two occasions I found an Easter egg that crept into the music, maybe there are more. Interstellar Overdrive has snippets of Embryo, The Narrow Way and Matilda Mother buried in the mix. The Nile Song has an obvious Sex Pistols reference smuggled in.

Two of the musicians have a link with The Orb hemisphere. Guy Pratt and keyboard player Dom Beken have been in the Transit Kings with Orb guru Alex Paterson and this clearly shows on Obscured By Clouds that gets an almost ambient house rendition.

The biggest surprise is the return, not of the son of nothing, but Atom Heart Mother, in a condensed but oh so admirable way. Pass me the Kleenex box, please.

The concert that I witnessed a long time ago in Antwerp, if I remember it well, ended with One Of These Days. I used that occasion to have a leak as I have always found it one of the Floyd’s lesser tracks.

For me, it didn't need to be on Roundhouse, nor US + THEM.

Time for the encores.

Does it need to be said that the Celestial Voices part of A Saucerful of Secrets is about the most beautiful piece of rock music ever? It beats Comfy Numb with at least half a block.

To end the gig Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets even manages to transform one of the worst songs of Pink Floyd into the next big 1968 thing, as memorable as The Monkees Porpoise Song. Point Me At The Sky is an unforgettable way to say goodbye.

Buy US +THEM for the jukebox hits, buy Live At The Roundhouse for the fun.

Oh, by the way, which one…?

Saucerful of Secrets is Dom Beken, Lee Harris, Gary Kemp, Nick Mason & Guy Pratt.

♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Hey You

Let’s kick at an open door, shall we?

Hey, Hey, Rise Up is, in my humble opinion, not a genuine Pink Floyd track. It is, at best, a curio, like The Merry Xmas Song, but of course, it has been made for a much better cause.

Releasing it as Pink Floyd instead of David Gilmour and friends will get the song free promotion and as such every (online) newspaper has already brought it up, although not all reviews are that positive. The (Daily) Telegraph, for instance, describes it as an overblown 1980s Eurovision entry.

Update 2022 04 10: 24 hours after its launch, the song hit the #1 position of iTunes downloads in 27 countries.

The song uses the vocals of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, singing a 1914 Ukrainian patriotic song 'Oi u Luzi Chervona Kalyna' (Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow). The roots of the song can be found in a traditional from 1640 as explained in the next video from Metal Pilgrim.

(Link for recalcitrant browsers: What made PINK FLOYD come back with THIS song after 28 years?)

A New Machine

It is not the first time Pink Floyd has used an outsider to sing a song, Roy Harper and Clare Torry come to mind, but it is a very rare occasion (not counting those two canine vocalists: Seamus and Mademoiselle Nobs). Pink Floyd doesn't have a tradition either of covering songs, the only examples I can think of is Green Onions on an early TV show and the King Bee demo. (Gilmour and Waters have recorded/streamed a few covers though.)

Gilmour and his merry men have the habit of turning Floyd's history into their hands and this time it is no different. The blurb says this is the first new original music they have recorded together as a band since 1994's The Division Bell. It makes me wonder what happened with Louder Than Words, from The Endless River, that ended the Floyd in a Yoko Ono kind of way. Fans are still dissing and fighting about it.

Gilmour has taken an a capella song from a Ukrainian singer-soldier and added some typical Floydian ingredients in the mix. On the video, we can see he uses his 1955 Fender Esquire that is prominent on the About Face album cover, but more than probably he changed that for a Strat, at least for the second solo.

David's guitar play is, as always, impeccable - gold dust as one fan describes it. To my amazement, plenty of room is given to Nick Mason in the second part of the song. He spices it with his typical Masonic drum fills. He still is the best drummer for the band and the only member who has been present on every album, in every incarnation. Rick's keyboards are missed but you could do a lot worse than with Nitin Sawhney. (Spoiler: will he be on the solo album David Gilmour is currently recording?)

The song is short, three minutes and a half. Luckily Gilmour didn't fall into the trap of adding a six minutes guitar solo on a one couplet song like he used to do in the past.

Bandsmen by Remote Control

On the Steve Hoffman Music Forum, the song is heavily discussed and, as usual, opinions tend to differ, with online missile shootings between the David and Roger camps. Pigheaded people have forgotten that Roger Waters left the band some 37 zillion years ago.

One can’t deny that Waters’ opinion about the war is somewhat prevaricating, one fan put it like this:

Given some of Roger's asinine comments on the subject of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I think it's for the best that he's not involved.

I agree with some of Waters' political opinions, but the fact that he was a welcome guest on the one-sided propaganda channel that is RT (Russia Today) has been bothering me. Playing the Ukrainian Nazi card is a bit stupid after you have been welcomed by a TV station that has invited conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Holocaust deniers.

Waters is writhing around like a snail in a saucerful of salt, condemning the war but trying to blame NATO and the USA. I’m old and realistic enough to understand that international politics is a dirty business. I agree that the ‘democratic’ Western world has played a dubious role in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution and its aftermath. In something resembling a mediocre Ian Fleming story, they overplayed their cards, perhaps not realising that Vladimir Putin is an even bigger madman than Donald Trump ever was.

Just Before Dawn

Floyd anoraks will fight over everything, even the use of the font on the cover picture for the song. It uses a letter type that is very close to the one we know from The Wall. It is even closer to the lettering on the anti-war single When The Tigers Broke Free, from 1982. We leave it in the middle if this is a deliberate stab at Roger Waters or just a clever marketing trick.

Hey, Hey, Rise Up is a very uncommon single by the Floyd, but these are uncommon times. Once you get used to the pompous singing you can discover its magic or as Gilmour ironically put it: the rock god guitar player. Bloody well done.

Buy it.

(Link for recalcitrant browsers: Pink Floyd - Hey Hey Rise Up (feat. Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox))

Pink Floyd 2022

Many thanks to: Metal Pilgrim, Steve Hoffmann Forum and its many visitors.
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Sources (other than the above mentioned links):
Petridis, Alexis: ‘This is a crazy, unjust attack’: Pink Floyd re-form to support Ukraine, The Guardian, 7 April 2022.

Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

Good news and bad news in Pink Floyd land.

The charity single Hey, Hey, Rise Up! has finally got a physical release and has hit first place in the English charts, for about five minutes. If you are one of these critics who don’t consider it a Pink Floyd song because Roger Waters isn’t on it then I’ll politely tell you to fuck off. Roger Waters is the man who backed up Putin days before Russia invaded Ukraine. He’s a great artist but also an idiot. More in our review (that paradoxically starts by saying it isn’t a Pink Floyd song) at: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

The B-side of the single is a partially re-recorded and remixed version of A Great Day for Freedom and that is where a second war comes in. For years Jon Carin was an amiable double spy, playing on records and live shows of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour and Roger Waters without any problems.

But when the box-set The Later Years, with a re-recorded and remixed A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, came out, something changed. Suddenly Jon Carin claimed – quite aggressively – that most keyboard parts on The Division Bell and The Endless River, credited to Rick Wright, were his work. This made him persona non grata in the Gilmour camp. (For more info, see: Not Now Jon)

Piano Piano

On an Italian Facebook page, Carin nicely summed up what is his problem (taken from the Steve Hoffman Music Forum, posted by Buran1988):

When I was asked to work on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, you must understand 4 things...

1) The band Pink Floyd did not exist.
2) I wasn't working on it as a Pink Floyd record because it wasn't Pink Floyd yet.
3) Pink Floyd wasn't there.
4) There were no songs at all, we made them up or helped facilitate extremely rough ideas.

And a few years later, it was similar, but now Rick & Nick were part of the process, too. Rick and I were extremely close friends. At the time of Division Bell, Rick & I were really hoping it would be a record like Wish You Were Here. Maybe 4 extended songs. As Division Bell progressed, the songs got shorter and poppier and Rick completely lost interest and was quite upset at how it was turning out, and I was left to do most of the keyboards.

The irony that I completely agreed with Rick was not lost on me. But with a looming deadline because of the tour that was booked, that is how it went. It was way more complicated and nuanced than that, but that's a general idea.

And just for the record, I adored Rick and LOVED his playing. But sorry, that's me on much of Division Bell. And the fact that the credits were completely wrong on top of having slaved away on it for a year is quite insulting to me, despite asking many times for them to be corrected over the past 30 years. And it would be very insulting to you if you were in my shoes. I hope this helps to clarify things.

Rick Wright losing interest in The Division Bell is completely new to me, although he complained in 2000 that there had been some issues over copyrights and that he threatened to leave the recordings.

It came very close to a point where I wasn’t going to do the album because I didn’t feel that what we’d agreed was fair. (Pigs Might Fly, p 355.)

While I have the greatest respect for Rick Wright as a musician, leaving musical projects behind might have been something of a constant for him. He did it on Zee's Identity, and it has been rumoured - again by that same Jon Carin - that the driving force behind the Broken China album was Anthony Moore. Carin also claims that Rick used sound libraries, programmed by Jon, without mentioning it on his solo record.

A Slightly Faster Day

Let’s return to the Hey, Hey B-side: A Great Day for Freedom. Hear it and see it first and we'll talk about it afterwards.

Link for recalcitrant browsers: https://youtu.be/H__12YV8miY

This new version mixes old elements from The Division Bell version with new ones. Because Kit Rae can say it so much better than I can, I will quote/paraphrase from him.

The tempo has been increased with about 7% (between 6,50 to 6,95%, according to different people). The whole song is mixed and EQ'd slightly different from the original. Overall it is a bit drier and more upfront compared to the original mix, which has a lot more room/plate reverb.

The vocals were not completely rerecorded. Most of it is identical to the original mix, but a few verses are not. David just mixed in some vocals from a different take to make this mix a bit different. The whole "ship of fools" through "paper doves in flight" verses are a different take, and "now frontiers shift" is different, but the rest of the song is the same take. 

The guitar solo is identical to the original, just EQ'd differently. The orchestra from the middle of the song and under the guitar solo has been entirely removed. There are new backing vocals that start at the 3:08 mark, similar to the Meltdown version.

The four re-recorded lines for this song can be found on the
2nd verse:  

The ship of fools had finally run aground  
Promises lit up the night  
Like paper doves in flight.

and during the 4th verse:

Now frontiers shift like desert sands.

Jerry Is Bored compared these with several David Gilmour sound tapes and concludes that they have been recently recorded:

During the changed lines, an alternate take was used, but this take was not recorded in 1994 as some have suggested. There is a marked difference between David's voice in 1994 and his voice now. The replaced lines in this new mix have that faint rasp in them, just like a lot of David's other vocal recordings from recent years. If these alternate takes had been recorded in 1994, they would sound smoother.

Credits

The official credits for the B-side (as printed on the single) are as follows:

David Gilmour: Vocals, guitars, keyboards
Nick Mason: Drums
Richard Wright: Keyboards
Sam Brown, Claudia Fontaine, Durga McBroom: Backing vocals

This was immediately ‘corrected’ by Jon Carin. He published ‘his’ version of the credits, but probably without listening to the new version (that has no orchestration at all):

David Gilmour: guitar, bass and lead vocals  
Nick Mason: drums  
Jon Carin: piano, Prophet V, B3  
Gary Wallis: percussion & drums
Ed Shearmur: orchestration  
Durga, Claudia & Sam: backing vocals

As usual, this created some discussion between believers and non-believers. The Pink Floyd fan-site Brain Damage looked into the matter, and came up with this:

The recording, using the original drums and bass by Nick and David, has keyboards by Rick and backing vocals by Claudia, Sam and Durga taken from the Pulse rehearsals. New piano, Prophet 5 synthesiser and Hammond are played by David, as on the original demo.

We've had it confirmed by Pink Floyd management that the credits on the single are 100% correct. The piano was re-done, the main synth was from David Gilmour's original demo, and the backing vocalists were added on to replace the orchestra.

If one reads between the lines, this could mean that David Gilmour replaced all of Jon Carin’s keyboard parts, just to make him shut up. In the video clip, that accompanies the song, there is no trace of Jon Carin at all. He has been wiped out with Stalinist scrutiny. (By the way, the Rick Wright shots don’t match with the music at all).

It only adds to the mystery: is there any Rick Wright on this record at all?

State of Independence

The neutrality of the three big Pink Floyd fansites has been discussed for ages, also here at the Church. We still haven’t forgotten that the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band release, with Syd Barrett, was never mentioned on several of them.

Brain Damage has a history of only giving the Floyd’s official viewpoints. Although Brain Damage writes the following: “We get no funding, so every penny/cent helps keep the site running,” Jon Carin, in a Facebook comment to me, insinuated something else. According to him Matt, the webmaster of Brain Damage, is ‘an employee of the [Pink Floyd] management, so there’s bias.”

Team Player

It all depends on whether you look at Jon Carin as a session player or as something more. Let’s go to Wikipedia for a definition:

Session musicians, studio musicians, or backing musicians are musicians hired to perform in recording sessions or live performances. (…) Session musicians are usually not permanent or official members of a musical ensemble or band. They work behind the scenes and rarely achieve individual fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders.

Session musicians have been omnipresent on the most prestigious records. Pet Sounds would be nowhere without them.

A session musician can play on a track because the ‘official’ band member can’t get it right. Just ask Nick Mason on Two Suns In The Sunset or Charlie Watts on You Can't Always Get What You Want. Other studio musicians are hired for ‘doubling’, meaning they duplicate the work of a band-member note by note, often to have a better sounding version.

This is where Jon Carin comes in. He was a hired hand, a stand-in for Rick Wright when that last one wasn’t able to play, for whatever reason. And if we may believe the rumours, Rick Wright found many reasons to not appear in the studio. He did the same thing he did on The Wall, go sailing when he was expected in the studio. The problem for Diet Pink Floyd was that they couldn’t sack him a second time without looking ridiculous.

So they created this myth around Rick Wright which still is popular today. A somewhat introverted musician who, invisible to most, shaped the sound of Pink Floyd. For the release of the rerecorded and remixed Momentary Lapse history was even ridiculously rewritten.

Arrangements and Copyrights

In music, so says Wikipedia, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition.

Pink Floyd has always looked at copyrights conservatively, meaning that whoever comes up with a song gets the full credits.

Let’s take Money, for example, boasted by Roger Waters as being his – and only his – masterpiece. The two minutes and a half demo of this song has an almost Delta blues quality. David Gilmour played it on a radio show to demonstrate the difference between a demo and the final product, adding – somewhat wryly – if Roger Waters had put the guitar solo on sheet paper before Gilmour recorded it.

The guitar and saxophone solo (by Dick Parry) is what we call ‘arrangement’ and because Floyd uses a conservative view on copyrights, neither Gilmour nor Parry get a slice of the copyright pie.

Another Floydian example is Sheep, from the album Animals. It is credited to Roger Waters but throughout the song, there are innovative keyboard parts from Rick Wright. For years fans have asked why he didn’t get any credit for that. The answer is simple: it’s an arrangement.

For The Division Bell, Rick Wright jammed with David Gilmour and Nick Mason on about 65 pieces of music, cut down to 27 and later to 11. It was at a later stage that Jon Carin was brought in to give shape to the tracks. Carin was hired for his chameleon abilities, his mission was to sound like Rick, who lost interest, partly due to copyright problems (Rick Wright was never a full member of the band, despite the smooth PR talks).

While a session musician can add an anecdote or two when he is interviewed or writes a book (see My Bass and Other Animals by Guy Pratt for a perfect example) it is not done to air the dirty laundry. Except perhaps for those biographers who thrive on that sort of shit. And that rag called The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, obviously.

Lennyif (at Hoffman's Music Forum) describes it well: “Carin comes off like he is tap dancing on Wright's grave now.” Guy Pratt has remarked the following on Rick’s birthday: “And there are those who would try and belittle him and take his credit when he’s not here to speak for himself.”

I can understand that Jon Carin has a (financial) problem with David Gilmour and that he wants to ventilate that to the outside world. But instead of doing exactly that he besmirches the image of his ‘extremely close friend’ Rick Wright.

It probably is not a coincidence that Jon Carin belongs to the Roger Waters camp now and that he has joined Waters’ This Is Not A drill’ tour. Roger Waters, if you may remember, is the idiot who defends war criminals and makes a million bucks out of it.

If we can say one thing, it is that Jon Carin should be more careful chosing his friends. Let's end this article on a more positive note, shall we?

Link for recalcitrant browsers: https://youtu.be/iHEDduKMGqA

Many thanks to: Big Pasi, Buran1988, Jon Carin, Geoffers, Jerry Is Bored, Kit Rae, Lennyif, Matt (Brain Damage), MOB, Nipote, Guy Pratt and all the beautiful people on Steve Hoffman's Music Forum and Yeeshkul!
♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥

Sources:
Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013, p. 355.

Links:
Pink Floyd new song - “Hey Hey Rise Up” at Steve Hoffman's Music Forum.
Pink Floyd's A Great Day For Freedom 2022 - video at Brain Damage
Pink Floyd's A Great Day For Freedom 2022 at Brain Damage

Hip to be Square

Over the years, I have acquired a few too many Hipgnosis photo books, starting with Storm Thorgerson’s Walk Away Renée and ending with Aubrey Powell’s Hipgnosis Portraits (simply named Hipgnosis in the French edition, which has an extra boobylicious picture because French will be French). I may even have skipped a few, as they all have the same pictures and roughly the same text.

In 2022, Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell wrote an interesting (and funny) autobiography that was reviewed here as well: Through The Prism. (See: Cows, Pigs, Sheep...) This was followed by an ‘authorised story of Hipgnosis’, Us and Them, written by Mark Blake, that gave more saucy details about the Hipgnosis trio. (See: Un Orage Postmoderne) In between those two, a Hipgnosis documentary saw the light of day, Squaring The Circle, by Anton Corbijn. It was shown at a few movie festivals and streamed on several channels, but a physical release could not be found. Until now, although, at the time of writing, it can only be found on Amazon UK, where they have a ‘Collector’s Edition’ version. Probably it’s called that way because it has a DVD and a Blu-ray with the same content.

Squaring the Circle

The movie starts with Po Powell walking through an old cemetery, carrying a huge carton folder on his back. Apparently, it is the same portfolio Hipgnosis used in the sixties. It is a powerful scene, obviously augmented when Shine On You Crazy Diamond chimes in. I know it is a cinematographic trick to make our eyes water, but it is damn effective.

Po sits down, opens the folder, and shows us several iconic images: Peter Gabriel, 10CC, Pink Floyd (three different ones)...

The first talking head is, weirdly enough, the nincompoop known as Noel Gallagher, but it has to be said that his interventions are cool and to the point. He has aged gracefully.

Starting in Cambridge in 1964, Po tells us how he met Storm, who would soon become his blood brother. David Gilmour and Roger Waters comment that Storm was the leader of a bohemian pack of hipsters who listened to jazz, smoking joints.

Storm Thorgerson gets some words in as well, not fully grasping why some people think he has an ego the size of a small planet. These archival snippets have been shown before, in Roddy Bogawa’s Taken By Storm, but more of that if you keep on reading.

Storm teaches Po how to become a photographer, a trade that is, according to Po, close to alchemy.

The documentary jumps to the first Hipgnosis album sleeve, A Saucerful of Secrets. It tries to emulate a space rock kaleidoscopic drug experience of sorts. (Actually, the duo did some book covers before, but that isn’t mentioned.)

The name Hipgnosis came from Syd Barrett, says Po, although other witnesses deny that and give the honour to Dave Henderson or Adrian Haggard. It will be forever shrouded in mystery.

LSD changed a lot, and Po testifies how Syd reacted: "There was a fear that emanated from him." Storm and Po also witnessed the dark side of LSD, and they both needed therapy to get rid of the spectres haunting their brains.

The movie has been going on for about 20 minutes, and all they have been talking about is the Cambridge mafia connection between Hipgnosis and Pink Floyd. But then the subject broadens.

This is a release suited for minors aged 15 and older, and as such, it tends to go soft on certain subjects. An example is the snippet of the archive video of the Edgar Broughton Band slaughterhouse sleeve, which shows more (male) buttocks in the Bogawa documentary than in Corbijn’s version.

There is the anecdote that Jill Furmanovsky was hired by Storm because she had nice tits, and obviously, that doesn’t make the Squaring the Circle final cut either. It was no secret that Storm liked the female body, and several of his Hipgnosis sleeves show that, not always in good taste.

The ‘We piss in the sink’ story does pass the censor; apparently that one was too good not to mention.

The tipping point of Hipgnosis was not Lulubelle the Third — sorry to disappoint you, fellow Pink Floyd fans — but 1971’s Elegy from The Nice. Suddenly, Storm and Po realised you could put a piece of land art on a sleeve and sell it as an album cover. This culminated in 1973 when Hipgnosis became the go-to studio: Band on the Run, Houses of the Holy, and The Dark Side of The Moon.

By the mid-seventies, money is gushing in and Po travels around the world. In a shot that takes a split second, we see some lines of white powder on a mirror. It is the only suggestion that something was going wrong with them.

Peter Christopherson, the third Hipgnosis partner, brought an element of darkness to Hipgnosis. He had a music career as well, joining Throbbing Gristle and starting Coil and Psychic TV. Apart from that, not much is revealed about him in this documentary. Most of it isn’t suited for minors anyway. For one thing, he was aware of the changes in the music industry with punk, après-punk, and the birth of MTV.

In the early eighties, Storm and Peter believe there is no future in record sleeves any more, and they decide to start a music video company (Greenback Films). Po reluctantly joins them. In Po’s words, this made Storm think he was the master of the universe. He was always going over budget, making the company bankrupt in a couple of years.

Po Powell breaks down when he talks about the Hipgnosis collapse and their lost friendship. It is a powerful image, and putting Wish You Were Here on top of that adds to the sentiment. The screen turns black.

After the message that Storm died in 2013, the camera points back to Po, still crying over the death of his friend. In my opinion, Anton Corbijn crosses a voyeuristic line there. Chasing for cheap sentiment.

The epilogue has Po, with the carton portfolio on his back, walking towards the horizon, carrying the weight of the world. One of the best documentaries I have ever seen, with a more than excellent soundtrack.

One point of criticism, though. Squaring The Circle has one of the most underwhelming extras I have ever witnessed, consisting of a superfluous slideshow of merely 20 ‘iconic’ Hipgnosis covers. That's why we will give you a special feature at the bottom of this page.

Taken by Storm

Taken by Storm is a 2015 documentary by Roddy Bogawa. It takes off where Squaring the Circle ended, with Thorgerson’s photoshoot for Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987).

This documentary isn’t as streamlined as the über-slick Squaring the Circle and has a ‘home movie’ vibe all over it. It uses a lot of archival material and impromptu interviews with Storm. The interesting thing is that it also has a healthy interest in Storm’s projects after Hipgnosis, with interviews of musicians of the post-2000 era.

As usual in these documentaries, there are a bunch of talking heads telling us what a genius Storm was. There is diversity among the guests from both documentaries, which is a good thing.

After a 15-minute introduction with Thorgerson’s later work, the documentary jumps to Cambridge in the sixties, with Storm and Roger Waters playing on the same rugby team. It starts the story of Hipgnosis, as told by Storm and Po. This time Po does mention that Hipgnosis started by making pictures for book covers, but of course, it doesn’t take long before he turns to A Saucerful of Secrets. It is noteworthy that Po doesn’t link Syd Barrett with the Hipgnosis name this time. It’s just a name they found on the front door.

Atom Heart Mother gets mentioned, as does Elegy, as a pivotal point in Hipgnosis’ career. Then it’s up to Led Zep and Houses of the Holy. Storm and Po talk about the philosophy behind their record covers while Squaring the Circle is more anecdotal.

The Animals debacle (or publicity triumph, if you will) gets mentioned, this time by Storm. This isn’t a chronological overview. The Dark Side of the Moon gets mentioned after Animals, and it takes them half a minute to get rid of it. Then the documentary wooshes back two years earlier to the Edgar Broughton Band, and this time we do get to see the model’s buttocks.

Storm starts a hypocritical, poor artist’s sermon by saying how he never made money out of his work. From the Mark Blake biography, however, we know that Po bought a villa with a swimming pool and a speedboat in Florida. Storm was not only the last living surrealist, to quote David Gilmour, but he could also be quite surreal in his testimonies before a camera.

The Sex Pistols used to have a rehearsal studio next to the Hipgnosis offices. The long-haired hippies slowly started to understand there was a musical revolution in the air, especially when the Pistols came in wearing their I Hate Pink Floyd t-shirts.

After a sabbatical, a music video company sees the light of day: Greenback. Storm and Po get the chance to make a video for a new artist, whose Wherever I Lay My Hat reaches the top of the charts. Suddenly, they are recognised as the movie company for the stars. Within two years, they turn over 6 million dollars a year, according to Po. Storm has the opposite opinion: "It was totally disastrous" and tries to blame the others.

A Barry Gibb movie (Now Voyager) goes so over budget that it drowns the company. Po and Storm separate and won’t speak to each other for 12 years.

This is where Squaring the Circle stops, but Taken by Storm continues with Thorgerson’s solo adventures. Storm’s initial rescue lies in the fact that Pink Floyd does a Waters-less comeback and they want the Hipgnosis grandeur back. The documentary turns to the many post-Hipgnosis record sleeves and has interviews with collaborators, musicians, and even a psychoanalyst.

In 2003, Storm suffers a stroke in Paris. Nobody admits this happened while supervising a Pink Floyd exhibition. During his recovery, he manages to bring up an idea for a Mars Volta cover that comes out of his situation.

In the last quarter of the documentary, an EMI manager says cover art will be pushed away, not realising that there will be a vinyl renaissance. It’s the proof that record people haven’t got a single idea what they are talking about.

An Epic Epilogue

Squaring the Circle is a film about Hipgnosis, narrated by Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. Taken by Storm is a film about Thorgerson's magic, narrated by Storm. As such, they are complementary.

One of the things I noted is that people have aged a lot between these two documentaries. It’s the Mortality Sequence all over again. Watch them both, if you can.

Guest List

For those who kick on those things, here is a list of the talking heads in both documentaries. It shows that both have an exclusive list of guests. How many of these people do you know?
TBS = Taken By Storm, STC = Squaring The Circle.

Special feature: Hipgnosis Covers with a Pig

Pictures taken from the (deleted) 'Records My Cat Destroyed' Tumblr. No pigs were harmed during these photo sessions.

Many thanks to: Hipgnosis Covers.
♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥

Previous Hipgnosis reviews:
Aubrey Powell: Through the Prism -- Cows, Pigs, Sheep... 
Mark Blake: Us and Them -- Un Orage Postmoderne