PINK FLOYD - UMMAGUMMA @ 55

 

Released 55 years ago today, on November 7th, 1969, it's Pink Floyd's fourth album, Ummagumma, perhaps the strangest release in their entire catalogue. The album was one of their more unusual conceptual concoctions, being composed of a live album, and a studio LP that was split four ways for solo works by each band member.

The original idea behind the live album was to feature fan favourites that would subsequently be dropped from the set. Although the sleeve notes say that the live material was recorded in June 1969, the live album of Ummagumma was recorded at Mothers Club in Birmingham on April 27, 1969, and the following week at Manchester College of Commerce on May 2 as part of The Man and The Journey Tour. Keyboardist, Richard Wright, later said the recording of "A Saucerful of Secrets" was a composite from both gigs. A show at Bromley Technical College on April 26 was also recorded but not used.

The studio album was something of an experiment to allow each member to explore their own musical muse, unfettered by any collaborative concerns. Each member was given half a side of the LP to do whatever they wanted. While the initial concept was met with enthusiasm by the band, once they got into the recording process, their focus became considerably less assured, resulting in a fair bit of studio noodling, with little sense of intent or direction behind it all. The results were some of the most experimental compositions of the group's career, although it all felt a bit too self-indulgent, and even pretentiously contrived in its avant-garde awkwardness.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the album was the cover design by Hipgnosis, who were responsible for most of the band's LP covers over their career. The cover artwork shows a Droste effect, the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, featuring the group, with a picture hanging on the wall showing the same scene, except that the band members have switched positions, and this is then repeated two more times. The British version has the Gigi soundtrack album leaning against the wall immediately above the "Pink Floyd" letters. Storm Thorgerson explained that the LP was included as a red herring to provoke debate, and that it has no intended meaning. On the rear cover, roadies Alan Styles (who also appears in "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast") and Peter Watts are shown with the band's equipment laid out on a taxiway at London Biggin Hill Airport. This concept was proposed by Nick Mason, with the intention of replicating the "exploded" drawings of military aircraft and their payloads, which were popular at the time. The album's title supposedly comes from Cambridge slang for sex, commonly used by Pink Floyd friend and occasional roadie Iain "Emo" Moore, who would say, "I'm going back to the house for some ummagumma". According to Moore, he made up the term himself.

When the album was released, it performed well commercially, breaking into the lower reaches of the top 100 in the US and Canada, while peaking at #5 in the UK. Its critical response was also, initially, quite positive, though as time has passed and it has been contextualized by the group's subsequent output, it is now generally considered one of their lesser releases. Even the band themselves dismiss it as a failed experiment. Yet, personally, it was the album that got me interested in the band. As a teen who came of age during the dawn of "punk", I had disparaged Pink Floyd as one of the "dinosaurs" of '70s excess, a perspective that lingered until the late 1980s, when a friend played me the studio LP from Ummagumma. At the time, I was very much into the more abstract music of the day, so I was rather pleasantly surprised by the strangeness of the album. After that point, my attitude changed towards the band and I began to warm to their music in a much bigger way than was possible for me beforehand. In that sense, I will always have a certain fascination with the album.