PINK FLOYD - THE WALL @ 45

 

Released on November 30th, 1979, the eleventh studio album from Pink Floyd, The Wall, turns 45 years old today. Perhaps only second to Dark Side of the Moon in terms of defining a peak of the band's career, it also served as a harbinger of what would cause the band to splinter during its production and after its release.

The Wall, like many of the band's LPs, is a concept album, but for this release, the concept hit much closer to home than some others. By the end of the 1970s, Pink Floyd had reached a kind of status as a band that ultimately put them at odds with their fan base, something that would directly contribute to the creation of this record. Throughout 1977, Pink Floyd were on their "In the Flesh" tour to promote their album, Animals. Bassist and lyricist, Roger Waters, despised the experience – angered by the audience's rowdy behaviour (such as setting off fireworks in the middle of songs) and convinced that they were not really listening to the music. On July 6th, 1977, at the Montreal Olympic Stadium, a group of noisy and excited fans near the stage irritated Waters so much that he leaned over and spat on one of them.

For Waters, the experience was something of a wake-up call, highlighting how degraded the relationship with the audience had become. Instead of the crowds being a source of inspiration and an adrenaline rush, it was all feeling very adversarial and confrontational. The intimacy was completely gone, swallowed up in the grotesque size of the stadiums and driven by corporate profits over artistic merit. It ultimately felt
sadomasochistic, like some kind of perverse torture. Immediately after the experience in Montreal, Waters spoke with producer Bob Ezrin and a psychiatrist friend about the alienation and despair he was experiencing. He articulated his desire to isolate himself by constructing a wall across the stage between the band and the audience. The concept was an instant source of inspiration.

As far as the band were concerned, the situation internally was crumbling, with tensions exacerbated by the fact the band were in dire financial straights. They had hired an investment firm to manage their money, but the firm had put much of it in high risk ventures that did not pay off, so instead of helping with the band's tax burdens, they were facing severe tax penalties, which forced the band to leave the UK to protect what little money they had left. They urgently needed a new record to set their house in order again.

Waters produced a couple of demos with two distinct concepts, one was a 90 minute suite called Bricks in the Wall, dealing with the idea of an isolated rock star struggling with a corrupted relationship between him and his audience. The other demo was about a man's dreams on one night, and dealt with marriage, sex, and the pros and cons of monogamy and family life versus promiscuity. When presented with the two options, the band chose the first, with the second eventually developing into Waters' first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984).

For production on The Wall, Waters insisted on hiring Bob Ezrin, who had previously worked with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Kiss, and Peter Gabriel, among many other high profile acts. Throughout the recording of the album, Bob would become a critical mediator within the band, as tensions continued to drive the members apart. He also helping develop the album's narrative. Ezrin presented a 40-page script to the rest of the band, with positive results. He recalled: "The next day at the studio, we had a table read, like you would with a play, but with the whole of the band, and their eyes all twinkled, because then they could see the album." Ezrin broadened the story-line, distancing it from the autobiographical work Waters had written and basing it on a composite character named Pink.

The Wall was recorded in several locations. Super Bear Studios in France was used between January and July 1979, and Waters recorded his vocals at the nearby Studio Miraval. Michael Kamen supervised the orchestral arrangements at CBS Studios in New York in September. Over the next two months the band used Cherokee Studios, Producers Workshop and The Village Recorder in Los Angeles. A plan to work with the Beach Boys at the Sundance Productions studio in Los Angeles was cancelled (although Beach Boys member Bruce Johnston does sing backing vocals on "In the Flesh?", "The Show Must Go On", the side 4 version of "In the Flesh", and "Waiting for the Worms").

As work continued on the album, the relationship between Roger Waters and Richard Wright became untenable. For a time, attempts to mend it had Wright taking more of an active role in the production, but the results were not satisfactory to Ezrin and Wright was initially consigned to working only at nights before Waters insisted he be out of the band entirely by the time they got to doing the final mix in LA. Wright ended up quitting the band in the end, only returning to tour as a hired musician, though he would eventually rejoin the band after Waters departed, following the tour for The Wall.

For the album's cover design, it was the first LP by the band not to have a cover by Hipgnosis since the band's debut LP. Waters had fallen out with lead designer/photographer, Storm Thorgerson, a few years earlier when Thorgerson had included the cover of Animals in his book The Work of Hipgnosis: 'Walk Away René', without consultation.

When the album was finally released, it became one of the group's biggest sellers. The album topped the US Billboard 200 chart for 15 weeks, selling over a million copies in its first two months of sales and in 1999, it was certified 23× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It remains one of the best-selling albums of all time in the US, having sold over 19 million copies worldwide between 1979 and 1990. The Wall is Pink Floyd's second-best selling album after 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon.

The critical response to the album, on the other hand, was decidedly mixed. The Village Voice critic, Robert Christgau, regarded it as "a dumb tribulations-of-a-rock-star epic" backed by "kitschy minimal maximalism with sound effects and speech fragments", adding in The New York Times that its worldview is "self-indulgent" and "presents the self-pity of its rich, famous and decidedly post-adolescent protagonist as a species of heroism". It's an opinion that I very much agreed with at the time of its release, finding the "poor little rich rocker" concept indicative of a kind of bloated rock star life that had been exploded by the immediacy and poverty of punk rock.

It would take many years before I could give this record a second chance and actually discover myself enjoying it. Indeed, the critical reservations at the time of its release have since given way to a general sense of reappraisal and appreciation for its merits. After 45 years, it has stood the test of time to be secure in its place as one of the band's most important and recognized works.

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.

PINK FLOYD - ANIMALS @ 45

 

January 21st marks the 45th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s tenth studio album, Animals. Inspired by the novel, Animal Farm by George Orwell, it’s an ambitious concept album which looks deeply into the brutality of capitalism through the class metaphor of the ruling “pigs”, their obedient and domineering servants, the “dogs”, and the subjugated masses, the “sheep”. While it is often overshadowed by albums like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Animals is deserving of attention as one of the groups last great recording achievements.

The roots of the album begin back in 1974 with a couple of live jam songs, You've Got to Be Crazy and Raving and Drooling. These were originally intended to become part of Wish You Were Here (1975), but plans changed as that album took shape and they ended up getting shoved to the back burner until it was time to start working on Animals.

After Wish You Were Here was completed, their contract with their record label for unlimited studio time expired, so the group decided to invest in their own recording facilities. The band purchased a three story block of church halls at 35 Britania Row in Islington, north London, and converted the building into both recording studios and storage facilities for their gear. By April of 1976, the studio was ready to begin recording of the new album, which went on until December.

The two live jams from 1974 were resurrected and the lyrics were updated for the album’s concept. You've Got to Be Crazy morphed into Dogs and Raving and Drooling became Sheep. A new song, Pigs (Three Different Ones), filled out the core conceptual triptych and the whole thing was book-ended by a short song split into two parts for the intro and outro, Pigs on the Wing (Pts 1 & 2). With the exception of a co-writing credit for David Gilmour on Dogs, the entirety of the album was credited to Roger Waters, something which was a bit of a signpost for the split that was developing within the band as Waters began to feel he was carrying most of the creative burden.

As the album progresses, it becomes apparent that the prime narrator is a “dog”, representing a ruthless, predatory businessman, who is manipulated by the elite “pigs” to prey upon the “sheep” for their benefit. It sets up a perfect analogy to the dominant class structure in capitalistic societies with the wealthy ruling class over the adversarial middle class subjugating the subservient lower classes. Eventually, the “sheep” rebel and overthrow the “dogs”, but their ignorance only leads them to replace the dogs as oppressors, perpetuating the class system while the “pigs” remain unscathed. It’s a deeply cynical outlook which is only mildly lightened by the dog’s realization that “love” and caring for others is the only way to ease the suffering & loneliness of this seemingly hopeless cycle of social struggle.

Musically, the album came about at a time when the “punk” zeitgeist was starting to become prominent and there’s a certain rebellion against that on this album, though you can hear how it would eventually shift the group away from the sprawling double digit run-times of Animals into the more concise radio friendly songs that would appear on The Wall a couple of years later. In that sense, the album feels a bit braced against the tides with its indulgences, but the performances still hold up as masterful and impactful and there’s an engaging flow to the arrangements and the narrative that carry the listener along for the ride.

The cover for the album is worthy of a dramatization on its own as it became somewhat notorious for its comical, absurdist disruption. After rejecting a few concepts from design firm, Hipgnosis, one of which included the idea of a child bursting in on parents having animalistic sex, Roger Waters came up with the factory concept since, at the time, he lived near Clapham Common, and regularly drove past Battersea Power Station, which was by then approaching the end of its useful life. They concocted the concept of flying a massive 40’ inflated pig over the factory and contracted a firm to custom fabricate the beast. In anticipation of any potential problems with the giant balloon on the day of the shoot, they hired a marksman to be prepared should they lose control of it, but because they had to reschedule the shoot for the next day due to bad weather, they forgot to re-book the marksman. The pig was finally launched and, as feared, it broke free of its moorings and took off into British airspace, making it to Heathrow airport where it caused quite a stir with mass panic and cancelled flights as authorities tried to figure out what on earth was going on. It eventually landed in a farmer’s field in Kent where it continued to provoke outrage as the farmer complained of it startling his cows. The inflatable was eventually recovered and a third shooting day was booked, but the resulting shots didn’t quite cut it and they found they had better shots of the factory on its own. So the decision was made to simply “cut & paste” the pig into the picture, something which seems easy enough today, but was a bit more hands on then as there was no such thing as Photoshop and such effects literally meant cutting up a photograph and pasting it to another one.

After the album’s release, the band went on tour to support it and the onstage rapport between Waters and the audience ended up taking a contentious turn throughout the tour, a situation which ultimately resulted in Waters being inspired to write The Wall as a reaction to that situation. Despite this, the album was a hit and, along with their back catalogue, helped the band beat out ABBA for most weeks on the charts in 1977. Critics were somewhat uneven in their response, with NME raving about it being extreme, relentless & harrowing while Rolling Stone’s critic was unimpressed. It’s legacy, however, has born out the warnings it gave about the nature of capitalism. When we look at our civilization at present, the cynicism that is steeped throughout its grooves is more than warranted and its message is even more disturbingly on point. It’s an album that I have taken a long time to warm to, but researching it and giving it a proper deep listen again has certainly given me a new appreciation for its complexities and depth.