PINK FLOYD’S HEART OF DARKNESS

It didnt seem like a bad idea at the time I accepted this assignment. Just because Pink Floyd hate the press and wont be interviewed seemed no reason to be discouraged. I also refused to be put off by the unavailability of tickets to their last gig at Madison Square Garden, or by the stories I had read about journalists who had been found dead, lying in a heap of dry ice with a laser beam hole through their ears after writing a rude article about the (Dark Side Of The) Moonies. It couldnt happen here. Or could it?

It was July 13th, a torrid Wednesday evening in the Apple, around 9:30, and the heat showed no signs of giving up. The entire populace seemed terminally cranky, and I wasnt really up for writing about the Floyd. They must have known, because around the second page, as I listened to the fourth side of Ummagumma, it happened. The lights dimmed and died, the turntable ground to a growling halt, the TV flickered off, and all four air conditioners made noises like expiring wildebeests. There I was, sitting in the darkness of BLACKOUT 77, as the networks later dubbed it— the worst New York disaster in years. And to think it was all because I...

New York had its first power failure in November, 1965. To shift the frame of reference eastward by about 3,000 miles, that same year found some architecture students at a London college playing together in a part-time band called the Architectural Abdabs. The lineup was not very stable, nor was the name, which was Sigma 6 at one point, and Meggadeath at another. Their songs were standard R&B classics lik^ “Roadrunner" and pop hits like “Louie Louie." What made the group stand out was the things they did between tunes— feedback solos, and various odd noises very unlike the rest of their approach.

By the beginning of 1966 the group had become set—a four piece named The Pink Floyd Sound, led by Syd Barrett. The other three, all old friends, were Roger Waters, demoted from lead guitar to bass; Rick Wright, capable on various keyboard instruments, and Nick Mason, the groups drummer.

Barretts songs were a far cry from those Pink Floyd had begun with. Twinky little tunes of psychedelic double entendre mixed with heady workouts built around one chord tied Floyd in with the embryonic “underground" scene in London. Growing up at the same time as San Francisco hippie music, Pink Floyd took their influences from groups like Love and Hendrix. Prompted by some American multimedia artists, Pink Floyd began using lights and slide projections at their club dates. The groups interest in non-musical accompaniment deepened, and by the end of 1966, they had hired a full-time lighting director for their concerts. With their stunning visuals and their trippy psychedelic music Pink Floyd established a strong following in London, and attracted the attention of a few would-be moguls, who thought there might be money to be made off this young group. In the wonderful tradition that still continues in pissholes like CBGBs and Maxs, the director of the UFO Club offered to make a record for the group so that they could approach a label and try to get signed up for real.

At the beginning of the ever-sohipand-groovy year of love, 1967, they went in the studio and cut a single; a Barrett song called “Arnold Layne", which concerned a prevert who stole lingerie off clotheslines so that he could transvest, or whatever. The trick worked, and the group got a record deal (with an enormous advance of about $10,000) which led them back into the studio to record an album. The studio they were working in happened to be Abbey Road, and the group in the next room the Beatles, who were working on something called Sgf. Pepper.

Amid these sessions, the Floyd played a major London concert, billed as “Space Age relaxation—electronic compositions, colour, and image projections." Just your basic average psychedelic happening in the Summer of Love.

A single released from the group in June became the anthem of the underground. “See Emily Play" was going to be “Games For May", but it got changed, and became a top five hit in Britain. Pink Floyd were popstars, which was good and bad. The rigors of being successful took their toll on Syd Barrett. An extremely neurotic guy to begin with, his penchant for dropping acid unleashed some very foul tendencies, and the creative demands placed on him to come up with more hit songs drove him over the brink. He started not showing up at gigs, refusing to rehearse, and allegedly beating up his girlfriend, all of which made him an impossible liability for a successful chart band. With great reluctance on the groups part, they started working without Syd, and asked another guitarist to join the group so that they could proceed with or without the “unreliable maniac" who still was calling Pink Floyd “my band." Dave Gilmour was the fifth Floyd for seven weeks, until the band threw Barrett out, unable to watch him sink into the pit he was digging for himself. The challenge was very difficult—Syd was the genius/leader they looked up to. He had directed the band into its successful period, and now they were without him.

Looking back now, zillions of platinum albums later, the Floyd did quite a bit better without Syd than they might have if he had stayed. On the other hand, Barrett has become a huge cult figure, even though he has not recorded or performed since the end of 1970. Stories of his madness abound, but the most telling evidence of his warped genius came towards the end of his tenure with Pink Floyd. Nick Mason recounts:

“Syd came in with some new material one day. The song went “Have You Got It Yet?" and he kept changing it around so that no one could learn it."

Roger Waters: “It was a real act of mad genius. I stood there for an hour while he was singing “Have you got it yet?". I kept trying to explain that he was changing it all the time so I couldnt follow it. Terrific."

Without Barrett, Waters became the groups chief songwriter, and thats when things began to get spacy. Frustrated in their desire to provide TURN TO PAGE 66 the film score for 2001, they accepted commissions for other -soundtrack projects, and did some high quality music for some distinctly low calibre movies. Fully enmeshed in their spacey style of long pointless instrumentals that had certain amounts of missing rhythm and cohesiveness, Floyd plowed along consistently through 19/2. They were popular and successful, making no great strides either forwards or backwards, and playing concerts mostly to stoned hippies around the world. Then came Dark Side of the Moon, and the new Floyd began to emerge. With Waters as sole lyricist, the songs began to take a gentle turn towards the pessimistic. While the music on Dark Side is so even and careful that it verges on muzak, the words convey an uneasy feeling; a pointless frustration about greed and despair that is very easy to overlook when you close your eyes and open your ears..Its not the music that says it.

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While Dark Side began hogging the record charts as one of the biggest and longest selling albums of all time, Pink Floyd began working out songs that would not appear on record for more than two years.

Between 1973 and 1976, Waters worked on songs that would show up on Wish You Were Here and Animals. These last three albums make up a distinctive era in Pink Floyd history. In order, the mood shifts from uneasiness to definite cynicism, to out-andout spite for the human race. The music has followed along, getting progressively sparser, sharper, and with less soft edges each time out. The total effect has been that of the three, Animals is the strongest; the most direct of the trio, with enough venom contained.in the grooves to poison an entire sheep farm. The viciousness of the lyrics match the bleak despair of the cover artwork, but what about the pig on the wing? ThereS no way to explain the dichotomy, but the Floyd sense of humor is most definitely a strange one. Their taste for the absurd only serves as a foil for their unrelenting scorn.

With the easily mixed human/animal metaphors flipping back and forth imperceptibly, lyrics like these from “Dogs" illuminate Waters view of the meaning of life:

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder You know its going to get harder... as you get older

And in the end youll pack up and fly down south

Hide your head in the sand Just another sad old man All alone and dying of cancer. * Even a song like “Anarchy in the UK" cant make a stronger statement than that.

Losing Barrett when they did, Pink Floyd lost the sense of madness and poisoned-eye-view that he had sketched out for them. Like Brian Wilson or Iggy or Jim Morrison, Barrett was one of those poet/visionaries who just cant relate to society (without going flippers. Back in 1968, the Floyd was giving out with the psychedelic mumbo-jumbo, and seemed determined to continue doing so until the next version of 2001 appeared. Without Syd they seemed doomed to their ladedas, but thank goodness thats all gone out the door. Maybe Im in a minority, but Ive always loved miserable-rock, and these days, the Floyd are about as miserable as any band Ive ever heard.

*®Pink Floyd Music Publishers, Inc.