All the Madmen by Clinton Heylin

Author:Clinton Heylin [Heylin, Clinton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780330785
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Originally intended as the closing theme to their new song-suite, the opening image of ‘Brain Damage’: ‘The lunatic is on the grass, remembering games, and daisy-chains and laughs / Got to keep the loonies on the path’, was a direct evocation of the Barrett of yesteryear. Indeed, as Waters said in 1998: ‘The grass [in “Brain Damage”] was always the square in between the River Cam and King’s College chapel . . . I don’t know why, but the song still makes me think of that piece of grass. The lunatic was Syd, really. He was obviously in my mind. It was very Cambridge-based, that whole song.’

‘Brain Damage’ was more than just another song brought to a possible Floyd project; it was the trigger for an album dealing with how life’s demands can lead people to the brink. The title of the piece when Floyd first toured with it the winter of 1972 said it all – Eclipse: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics. Even without the subtitle, there was no mistaking the album’s ghost in the machine. As Dave Gilmour recently remarked: ‘There are specific references to “Syd moments” in [the] lyrics of Dark Side. Syd was a constant presence in our minds and consciences.’ At the same time, Waters already had a grander theme in mind, and it was one that would dominate all of his songwriting in the years when the Floyd were remorselessly moving towards becoming the biggest band on the planet. The plan was, in Waters’ words, to ‘do a whole thing about the pressures we personally feel that drive one over the top.’ What he did not do was spring this concept on the rest of the band until rehearsals began to assume a direction of sorts:

Dave Gilmour: Sometime after we started and got quite a few pieces of music sorta formulated vaguely, Roger came up with the specific idea of going through all the things that people go through and what drives them mad; and from that moment obviously our direction slightly changed. We started tailoring the pieces we already had to fit that concept, and Roger would tailor words in to fit the music that we had. [1977]

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