Reinventing Pink Floyd by Bill Kopp

Author:Bill Kopp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Please Keep on the Track

Amid a busy schedule of concert dates and Pink Floyd recording commitments—sessions for Atom Heart Mother would begin at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios on March 1, 1970—David Gilmour began producing a follow-up to Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs. Simply titled Barrett, the second album from Syd would enjoy a far more disciplined approach than did its predecessor. Taking a page from Pink Floyd’s own highly organized and methodical working methods, Gilmour and co-producer Richard Wright scheduled sessions that they hoped would provide the structure Syd Barrett needed to complete a cohesive album of songs.

“Dave always had a flair for the production and engineering side of a studio,” says Jerry Shirley. “After all, 90 percent of a great production is how the record’s engineered. Then the rest of it is just how you place the condiments on top, so to speak. And Dave was brilliant at that from as long as I can remember.”

In addition to producing Barrett, Gilmour and Wright played on nearly all of its twelve songs, joined on various tracks by two veterans of The Madcap Laughs sessions, drummers Jerry Shirley and John “Willie” Wilson. The combination of a consistent lineup of musicians, a single production team, and that team’s eye toward discipline would result in Barrett emerging as a more cohesive album than its predecessor. Moreover, the material recorded included songs that—by Syd Barrett’s standards, in any event—were more conventional and fully formed than the songs that appeared on The Madcap Laughs. Of course, no one involved could have known that the sessions for Barrett would be the final studio efforts of consequence for Syd, who was only twenty-four years old when recording was completed.

Two days before recording for the album began, Syd Barrett made a rare radio appearance, performing four songs on John Peel’s Top Gear radio program. The band—Barrett on guitar and vocals, David Gilmour on bass guitar, and Jerry Shirley on percussion—played “Terrapin” from The Madcap Laughs as well as an unreleased Rick Wright tune called “Two of a Kind” (“Syd . . . thought it was his,” Gilmour told Barrett biographers Mike Watkinson and Pete Anderson). They also performed three new originals. All three would be recorded for Barrett.

Only a few tracks from the Barrett sessions would be recorded with all the musicians playing together in real time. Jerry Shirley recalls those session vividly. “That was myself on drums, Dave Gilmour on bass, Rick Wright on keyboards, and Syd Barrett on guitar.” Though “Gigolo Aunt” came out quite well, Shirley says that the session was “pretty shambolic, because you never knew which way Syd was turning.”

As with Willie Wilson on The Madcap Laughs, Barrett didn’t provide much musical direction for Shirley on the tracks recorded together live in the studio. “The guidance I remember from Syd were things like, ‘It sounds a bit cold,’ or, ‘I’d like it a little windy,’ or, ‘Maybe it could be kind of shiny over here and purple over there,’” Shirley says. “He talked in abstracts, in comparisons that weren’t musical.

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